In news: A new species of moss of the genus Bryocrumia has been named after the Malabar region of Kerala from where it was spotted.
About the moss-
- Bryocrumia malabarica, discovered in the Malabar Wildlife Sanctuary along the Western Ghats, is special.
- This tiny bryophyte is only the second species to be identified in the genus Bryocrumia.
- For years, the genus Bryocrumia was thought to include only one species – Bryocrumia vivicolor.
- Found on rocks in streams, B.vivicolor has been spotted in Congo and Uganda in Africa, North and South Carolina in the United States, China’s Yunnan, Nuwara Eliya in Sri Lanka, and Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala in India.
- Bryocrumia malabarica which is light green in colour, differs from Bryocrumia vivicolor in the structure of its leaves.
- The plant was first collected in 2014 as part of the PhD programme of one of the researchers.
- It is the 12th species of bryophytes newly described from Kerala in recent years.
Source: PIB
