More asbestos

Just to tie together a couple of previous threads: I had a look at the asbestos roof of the boathouse at Dingestow Court Lake this morning and noted 13 species of moss.  These included a single nice cushion of Schistidium elegantulum with terete white hairpoints and stomata on the capsule (under the microscope).  It's a good time of year for checking S elegantulum capsules as the stomata are easiest to spot when the capsules are unripe.  They need to be sought on the very base of the capsule, where it curves up from the seta rather than on the parallel sides - there are 8(ish) on S elegantulum and 0 (or 1 sometimes) on S crassipilum.

Here is a series of pics I took a few years back for a Field Bryology article on Schistidium elegantulum ID that I never finished writing.  They show how one needs to chop off the base of the capsule, cut that base in half, and then examine the two halves just near the seta to spot the stomata.