CHAPTER 3 Bryophytes, Lichens, Algae and Fungi
The non-vascular plants include the bryophytes (liverworts and mosses) and
organisms that are not truly plants but that have traditionally been treated as
plants: lichens (associations of fungi and algae), algae and fungi.
Bryophytes
LIVERWORTS
Marchantia polymorphaLinnaeus
liverwort
cosmopolitan
‘Liverwort’ or, in some areas, ‘liver-grass’, commonly assumed to refer to
Marchantia polymorpha,has, as the name indicates, enjoyed an age-old rep-
utation, propagated in herbals, as a remedy for liver complaints. The only
allegedly folk record of that use traced, however, is from Lincolnshire.^1 In
Berwickshire these plants were valued instead as a cure for colds and con-
sumption, for ‘a binding at the heart’ and as a diuretic for dropsy.^2
In Shetland a plant known as ‘dead man’s liver’ and popularly supposed
to be a lichen—though in fact a liverwort, according to a local botanist—
served at one time as a remedy for asthma.^3
MOSSES
SphagnumLinnaeus
bog-moss
arctic to subtropical zones of the northern and southern hemispheres
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