Guide to Liverworts of Oregon: Introduction
User Manual
HOME SPECIES INDEX GENUS INDEX GLOSSARY
Format
Although this is an electronic document, it is not an eBook in the ordinary sense. Whereas eBook is usually defined as "an electronic version of a printed book", the Guide does not have a printed equivalent. It is a complete, portable website which can be operated on any modern computer. It is written in HTML, designed to be displayed in a web browser. HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. Once loaded onto a computer's hard drive, it is available without an internet connection.
Objectives and Scope
The primary aim of the Guide is to provide illustrated dichotomous keys for identifying the species of liverworts growing naturally in the state of Oregon, U.S.A. The signal feature of the Guide is the use of photographic images, a majority color photomicrographs, to illustrate critical features defining the contrasting characters delineated in the pair of leads of each couplet. Photomicrographs have been emphasized over habit photos.
Each of the 174 species documented as found in Oregon is treated individually in the Guide. Each species page includes synonyms and a summary of the distribution and abundance of each species. Most have recognition hints with additional illustrations. Western Oregon is covered much more thoroughly than the eastern part of the state. With over 1,000 images, mostly color photomicrographs illustrating most of the 174 species, the Guide will be useful throughout the Pacific Northwest bioregion.
The style of this work has been developed with the intermediate to advanced student in mind. It is assumed that the user of this work has prior training in general botany but perhaps is not well versed in bryological lore. Most of technical terms used in the Guide are defined in an illustrated glossary.
Neither a textbook nor a manual, the Guide is intended to work as a companion to the California liverwort keys by Doyle and Stotler (2006), Field Guide to Liverwort Genera of Pacific North America (Schofield 2002), and the upcoming volume on liverworts in the Flora of North America (Volume 29). Further morphological, phylogenetic, ecological, or biological details of the species covered here can be found in more encyclopedic literature. My primary taxonomic guide has been the monumental six volume work by R.M. Schuster (1966, 1969, 1974, 1980, 1922, 1922a): Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America (East of the Hundredth Meridian). Books I consider especially valuable for consultation are those by Paton (1999, 2022), Damsholt (2002), Schumacker and Vana (2005), and Atherton et al. (2010).
How to use the Guide
Copy all files (or only the "Liverworts of Oregon" folder) from the flash drive to your computer hard drive. Select the folder "Liverworts of Oregon" and open the first file in that folder, "ahepkey.htm" with your browser. It is the home page of this work, the navigation hub of the Guide.
For ease of navigation, the home page ("ahepkey.htm") should be bookmarked in your browser tabs so it can be quickly found. There is a link to this page ("Home") on every page of the Guide.
There are eight links on the home page:
Introduction and Explanation.
General Key.
Shortcuts to distinctive groups.
Glossary.
Literature references.
Genus Index.
Species Index.
Classification.
General Key
From the "Home" page go to the main key by clicking on General Key. Each page in this key is a couplet with two contrasting leads. Decide which lead best fits the specimen being studied. Click on the highlighted part of the lead to go to the next couplet or to a species page. Every page has a link to the home page at the top. Links to a genus go to the key to species of the genus; links to a species go directly to a species page.
At the top of every page in the general key there are four links repeated from the "Home" page: HOME, SPECIES INDEX, GENUS INDEX, and GLOSSARY. At the bottom of each page is a "go back one step" link to the previous page which can be used in place of the browser's back arrow ("Show the previous page").
Immediately below the four major links at the top of the page there is a line of breadcrumbs. This is a series of links to the leads in each couplet taken to arrive at this page. It is a shorthand record of choices made. One can go back to any step in the keying process by clicking on the appropriate phrase in the breadcrumb trail. Clicking on the first breadcrumb will take you back to the start of the key. In most cases, only the first page of genus with a key to species has breadcrumbs that lead back through the general key to genera. Subsequent pages in a key to species have breadcrumbs starting with the first page of the species key to that genus.
All images in the Guide are thumbnails, both on the key pages and the species pages. Click on a thumbnail to see a large image. The larger images have been saved at 1000 pixels high to retain reasonably good resolution for viewing and printing. Use the browser back arrow ("Show the previous page") to return to the page on which the thumbnail was located.
Shortcuts to distinctive groups
Once a user is somewhat familiar with liverworts, the shortcuts page will allow quick access to groups that share a common set of traits.
These shortcuts are the closest this work comes to random access.
LEAF LOBES CILIATE [Couplet 4]
LEAVES COMPLICATE-BILOBED; SMALL DORSAL LOBE [Couplet 8]
OILBODIES ABSENT OR SOLITARY [Couplet 16]
LEAVES COMPLICATE-BILOBED; LOBULE VENTRAL [Couplet 21]
LEAVES INCUBOUS; NO LOBULE [Couplet 23]
ISOPHYLLOUS (THREE EQUAL ROWS OF LEAVES) [Couplet 25]
ROUND, SUCCUBOUS LEAVES [Couplet 28]
LOBED, SUCCUBOUS LEAVES [Couplet 37]
TINY SHOOTS (AVERAGE <0.5 mm WIDE) WITH BILOBED LEAVES [Couplet 47]
THALLOSE LIVERWORTS [Couplet 62]