File:Tamarisk Scalewort (Frullania tamarisci) - geograph.org.uk - 1182133.jpg

English: Tamarisk Scalewort (Frullania tamarisci). This much-branched purplish-red plant is a liverwort. It may appear to have little in common with another liverwort such as 930674, but the visual difference simply illustrates the contrast between the two main groups, thallose liverworts and leafy liverworts; see 886705.

Tamarisk Scalewort is a leafy liverwort (its leaves are less than a millimetre across, and are therefore too small to be individually visible in this photograph). The plant shown here measures 10 cm across. It is growing on a southeast-sloping face of a boulder, in an area of exposed moorland.

There are several scalewort (Frullania) species in Britain. Through a lens, it can be seen that these branching stems are closely covered by two overlapping ranks of leaves (there is one rank on each side of the stem) giving the impression of scales (hence the term "scalewort").

Says E.V.Watson's "British Mosses and Liverworts" (1955), "this is usually a robust and conspicuous hepatic and is likely to be among the first species to attract the attention of the beginner". I relied, for identification, upon certain microscopic features (a line of elongated cells) mentioned in Watson's book. The plant also had no odour, distinguishing it from the similar-looking but very aromatic F. microphylla.

Tamarisk Scalewort is abundant here in the west of Britain, but is rarer in the east; it can be found on rocks or on trees, and sometimes on turf. The book cited above notes that "it will often colonize relatively exposed boulders and wall-tops, where lichens predominate, ..., siliceous rock being favoured."