According to the British Bryological Society (naturally), Riccardia chamedryfolia, also known as ‘Jagged Germanderwort’ is a liverwort with a thalloid growth form and is naturally occurring in most parts of the world including commonly in the UK. There is a lot more biology-talk about liverworts vs. mosses vs. hornworts that I don’t understand, but I did manage to pick up an in vitro pot grown by Dennerle from Aquarium Gardens and thought I’d give it a try growing on hardscape. The secret hope is always to find something that will be able to grow in the Shrimphaus river even though many, many plants have failed there. It turns out that always wet with flowing water slate chippings exposed to typically low humidity indoor air is a quite austere environment. Still, hope springs eternal and I thought I could try out both the Shrimphaus river and also that wedged into cracks of the Fireplace Aquarium mountain would make a nice effect.
The Riccardia completely failed to thrive submersed in the Fireplace Aquarium. Bits of it kept coming loose and falling off even when I tried tying it in place and the whole thing just slowly seemed to pretty much die off. The last of it just gave up the other day. In the Shrimphaus river however…
Riccardia chamedryfolia can grow emersed
Riccardia on the river
two months later
seven months after planting
Whoa-hey! Looks like success! It was hard to tell earlier because Riccardia grows very slowly. The other qualified success you can see in the river is Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’ (also known as ‘golden creeping Jenny’), which interestingly is another plant that didn’t really work submersed in the Fireplace Aquarium, but has been putting in a reasonable effort on the river. As a more typical example of in-the-river failure, the smaller green sprigs of Ranunculus inundatus took a few weeks to dry out and die all the way; it didn’t thrive fully-submersed in the Shrimphaus either (and I’m coming around to thinking the Shrimphaus is actually a pretty difficult place to live). If you look carefully in the two months photo you can also see one of the Bloody Mary shrimp that has decided to take in the health springs of the river…
Even though Dennerle calls Riccardia chamedryfolia an “easy” plant, Tropica thinks it is better characterised as “advanced”. I’m going with Tropica on this one.