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tasmanian liverworts - treubiaceae
Treubia species
 Plants growing on rock |
 Close-up of plant |
Treubia tasmanica is considered to be one of the intermediate forms straddling thallose and leafy liverworts. There is some suggestion that this together with Haplomitrium could be the ancient form which gave rise to the two quite distinct forms found today.
It is reported to be one of the rare liverworts - its size and growth amongst more robust vegetation compounds the difficulty of finding it. We had the amazing fortune to number it amongst the first of our discoveries on the Blue Tier. Imagine then, our surprise, when a total stranger in Hobart identified the exact location where it was growing on the basis of a close-up image!
Specimens depicted were growing on a moss-covered rock. Limited nutrients and moisture probably contributed to the compressed growth - usually the leaves are spread out wider along the stem. The shoot in right image is around 4 mm wide but Treubia normally grow to twice that width.
Superficially it looked as if the leaves were growing in a whorl which pointed to Haplomitrium but it was pointed out to us that the leaf arrangement was in fact complanate (on a flattened single plane) and was thus Treubia.
Very little information is available on the sex life of T. tasmanica - sporophyte images seem to be scarce.
Although T. tasmanica has been recorded in Victoria it was 'apparently lost ... when a landslide in the early 1970s wiped out one of the only two known colonies. The other seems to have been lost through its roadside habitat drying out'.
There is a second species T. lacunosa known to grow in Tasmania but we do not know if it is found on the Blue Tier.
November 2021: we sighted fertile plants on the
Blue Tier but sprophyte differ from that of most of the liverworts
we are familiar with.
a) setae are massive up to 50 mm high and appear to persist for more
than a day as they were still erect at 3:00 pm when the
nearby Lepidozia setae had all collapsed. They also have a
greenish tinge when the common liverwort setae are a translucent
white.
b) capsule valves appear to be deciduous leaving behind the tip
covered with a mass of elaters and spores probably to be dispersed
over a longer period. Details
Page URL: http://www.bluetier.org/Liverwort/treubiaceae.htm