come back into its own as an amateur pursuit. The macroscopic Stoneworts, some of the
largest freshwater algae can however be tackled with a low power microscope. Several
comprehensive guides to these are now available. Charophytes of Britain & Ireland
by Moore, Tebbs & Green. 1987. is an inexpensive BSBI handbook (No: 5). They even
have their own Red Data Book for Britain & Ireland, Stoneworts, by Stuart &
Church. 1992. JNCC. And more recently Charophytes of the Baltic Sea edited by
Schubert & Blindlow.2003 and Charophytes of the Nordic countries, by
Langangen.2008. give us a wider more up to date picture.
Books on identification of marine algae
Despite our county having one of the longest coastlines for its area, our marine algal
flora is poorly known. As far as identification is concerned however the macroscopic
marine algae are very well covered. Seaweeds of the British Isles 1977-2003, the natural
history museum, covers the Red Algae in five separate books, all now published; the
Brown Algae in two volumes, the second of which is still awaited; the Yellow-Greens,
(Tribophyceae) represented solely by the genus Vaucheria, in one volume, 1987; and
the Green Algae in one volume - now however superseded by Green Seaweeds of
Britain & Ireland, by Brodie, Maggs and John. 2007. British Phycological Society.
Additional intended volumes on the microscopic marine Cyanophyta, the Prymnesiophyta
and the Marine Diatoms, have however, apparently been abandoned. And typical for the
Natural History Museum, a limited printing means that Volumes 2b and 3 are already
out of print. The whole set will set you back around £200. However there are two fully
illustrated Field Studies Aidgap Guides that cover the red and brown macroscopic species;
A Field Key to the British Brown Seaweeds. 1979; and A Field Key to the British
Red Seaweeds, 1987, both by Sue Hiscock. Distribution is covered by A Check-list
and Atlas of the Seaweeds of Britain & Ireland, by Hardy, Guisy & Arnold. 2nd edition.
2006. British Phycological Society. In addition to the checklist some 642 species are
mapped on a 10km sq. basis. The book at £97 is expensive, but fortunately it is available
free on the web as a pdf file from: www.brphycsoc.org. documents-
ChkList%26%20Atlas.pdf.url.
Books covering identification of Mosses, Liverworts and Hornworts
Those of us who started trying to identify Mosses and Liverworts in the 1950s struggled
with the only two comprehensive books men available, The Student's Handbook of
British Mosses by H. N. Dixon & H.G. Jameson 3rd edition 1924; and The Student's
Handbook of British Hepatics 2nd edition 1926, by S.M. Macvicar and H.GJameson.
When beginning to tackle a new group, a key to families or genera is always ovenvhelming
as any subtle dichotomies readily lead one astray. The latter book however was quite
usable for a beginner, because it had Jameson's super little drawings of each species, so
you could take shortcuts by trying to match your specimen to one of his little sketches,
which often included a sketch of a whole shoot of the liverwort in question. By flicking
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Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 59, May 2009