Towards the Establishment of a Pure Culture Collection of Hepaticae

Abstract

Fifty-eight species in 36 genera have been es- tablished in pure culture. Techniques are described for the isolation of spores and for the culture of the plants. During the past several years an increasing number of publica- tions have appeared dealing with the pure culture of bryophytes and with experiments based upon such cultures. There now exists a scat- tered but considerable mass of information dealing with this subject and, with the development, in recent years, of several types of ef- ficient constant environment chambers, it now seems both possible and desirable to expand such studies. In 1961 I began to examine the possibilities and problems in- volved in the establishment of a pure culture collection of hepatics which might subsequently supply experimental material for many types of investigation. With some modifications, the isolation tech- nique described by Iverson (1957) was employed successfully and the collection currently includes the 58 species in the 36 genera listed below. Each name is followed by its culture collection number and a note on the source of the isolate.