Pellia neesiana
Marchantiophyta
Pellia neesiana (Pelliaceae)
Ring Pellia
Frequent
Distinguishing Features
P. neesiana is the dominant Pellia in the region, inhabiting moist to wet soils, mineral banks and decaying organic matter with an irregularly-branched, light-green to dark purple-green thallus up to 10 cm long and often more than 1 cm wide. The center of the thallus is thickened and and often darker than the margins, which tend to undulate. The antheridia appear as aggregates of small bumps on thallus segments of male plants, while the archegonia and sporophytes develop within a smooth-margined tubular flap of tissue on a seperate female plant. In the spring, mature sporophytes can rise to an impressive height of 10 cm or more.
Similar species
Species of Moerckia have large, simple thalli, but are typically adorned with abundant scales on the upper surface. Such scales are absent in Pellia. Calycularia is similair, but has prominent pink-purple scales that can be seen with a hand lens on the underside of the thallus; these are likewise absent in P. neesiana. Apopellia alpicola is a subalpine and alpine species that has a very dissected tube ("pseudoperianth") surrounding its developing sporophyte. P. neesiana can occur at higher elevations, but the pseudoperianth is stubbier and its margins are mostly smooth. P. epiphylla has antheridia and archegonia on the same plant (monoicous); in P. neesiana they are on seperate plants (dioicous). It is most likely to be confused with similairly dioicous P. columbiana, but in that species, the flap of tissue surrounding the developing archegonia and sporophytes has an incised, tattered & toothed margin relative to the smooth outer margin of this structure in P. neesiana.
Habitat
Moist to wet, shady mineral soil, forested depressions, rock outcrops, boulders, ledges, cliffs, streambanks, shorelines, seepage areas, marshes, ditches, and disturbed areas, often submerged in shallow water, in the lowland, montane, and subalpine zones
Associated species
Rhizomnium glabrescens, Rhizomnium magnifolium, Kindbergia praelonga, Hookeria lucens