Growth of cultures in the mosscubator has been painfully slow. The cause seems to be fast desiccation: Despite a humidifier constantly maintaining a humidity of 75-80%, I noticed that the mosses in my mosscubator were bone dry mere hours after the daily watering. I suspect the combination of high ai...

Second regular maintenance blog

Since I had to leave my cultures unattended for some time it was necessary to conduct maintenance. Thankfully bryophytes are quite hardy when it comes to desiccation, no culture died. Besides watering a handful of cultures were reduced in size: dead or nearly dead g...

Humidity control for the Mooskubator

As written in my first blog post, I wanted to tackle the problem of frequent desiccation of my cultures. I put it off for some time, since I seem to be bad at finding the stuff I want for an affordable price online. I needed a humidifier which either started mi...

First regular Maintenance blog

Recently I did a regular maintenance of my collection. This means, I checked every culture using my stereo microscope and take a mental note of its condition. How vital does it look, do new shoots grow, are they endangered by pests, moulds or algae? Unwanted plant sh...

The Mooskubators

When I first started to take an interest in bryophytes, I didn’t want just to do what botanists generally seem to do with the specimens they collect: Dry and press them until no more life remains. I wanted to keep a “living herbarium”, a collection of, well, living specimens. In g...