Tortula bolanderi (Lesq.) M.Howe in Norfolk, a moss new to Britain

Abstract

While checking the status of a population of Reboulia hemisphaerica near Felmingham in Norfolk, UK, on 13 March 2021, M.P.G. noticed a small Pottiaceous moss that was unfamiliar to her. She considered the possibility that it might be Tortula amplexa, but although the plant had abundant rhizoidal tubers, they did not match those of T. amplexa. She sent some material to Richard Fisk, who suggested that it might be T. bolanderi, a moss not previously recorded in Britain. T.L.B. subsequently compared the Norfolk plants with material of T. bolanderi from Tenerife and confirmed the identification. Tortula bolanderi is known from Macaronesia (Canary Islands, Madeira) and a few widely scattered localities in Southwest Europe but is more widely distributed in western North America. It was first discovered on rocks near San Francisco Bay, California, and was described as a new species, Barbula bolanderi, by Leo Lesquereux in a paper read to the American Philosophical Society in 1863 (Lesquereux 1869). The species was named after Henry Bolander (1831– 1897), a teacher originally from Germany who had settled in San Francisco in 1861 and subsequently became state botanist for California. In this paper, we report Tortula bolanderi as a moss new to Britain, provide a description and illustrations of the British material, and discuss its presence in Norfolk and more widely in Europe. The nomenclature of bryophytes in the text follows the European Checklist of Hodgetts et al. (2020).