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 gametophytes where removed to give more space for healthy ones. This was conducted quite radical as the following "before"/after pictures of my Polytrichum sp. culture demonstrate:

This also allowed me to observe its asexual reproduction. Quite low on the mature gametophyte a juvenile shoot, or multiple emerge. When the stem connecting both shoots dies of two clones result.

The amount of dead biomass removed from my cultures:

Another observation was that cultures glued to their substrate using agar saw surprising growth. When I first glued them down, I was quite worried I killed them. Mosses “absorb” water by capillary conduction along the outside of the gametophyte. Logically they also soaked up the molten agar. Instead of suffocating them it probably helped them to store water, keep wet and continually assimilating. The following picture is an example, showing the lush green carpet that developed. Sadly I don't have a before picture.

This would imply my culturing technique with regular watering and a humidifier still fails to keep the plants continually wet. I ponder switching back to sealed glass jars. Since now I keep my cultures in a fridge, overheating should not be a problem. I am still concerned about mould though. I will switch to vermiculite soon since I cannot stand the orange colour of the expanded clay.