Two resources are usful in interpreting and presenting information about the Ohio moss flora. One of these is the 1996 Ohio Biological Survey publication "A Catalogue and Atlas of the Mosses of Ohio," by Jerry Snider and OMLA founding member Barbara K. Andreas. It includes a brief history of Ohio bryological studies, instructions for studying and preserving mosses, a list of the 400+ Ohio species, a separate list of synonyms, and county dot maps distinguishing between counties for which only literature records are known (denoted by squares on the maps) and those for which there are specimen records (circles). Inspired largely by the Catalog and Atlas, as well as by the activities of OMLA, there has been an upsurge in bryologic investigations in Ohio. Accordingly, there have been several informal hand-drawn updates to the maps, photocopied and passed among OMLA members. Presently, Barbara Andreas (Kent State University) is working with Rick Gardner (Heritage Botanist, Ohio Department of Natural Resources) to produce and more broadly disseminate high-quality moss distribution maps. 

The other useful resource is "Floristic Quality Assessment Index (FQAI) for Vascular Plants and Mosses for the State of Ohio," by Barbara Andreas, John Mack and James McCormac, 2004, Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. At this instrument's core is a 0 to 10 ranking system for individual plant species called the Coefficient of Conservatism (C of C). The C of C is an estimate of the degree to which a species tends to occur only in specific habitat types. These are mainly high-quality natural communities similar to those that existed in pre-settlement times. The original assigment of the C of C values is made by a person or group of persons intimately familiar with the flora of a geographic region based on their knowledge of the narrowness or breadth of a plant’s ecological tolerances. Several states or regions have produced assessment indices in recent years, but the Ohio index is exceptional in that it includes mosses, and so is expected to be very useful in bryological environmental assessment and vegetation research.

In addition to its usefulness in assessing vegetation, the Ohio FQAI, by virture of its presentation not only as a text portion of written document but also as a freely available spreadsheet appendix, is an immensly practical framework for constructing species lists. For vascular plants especially (Yes, it's a bit of a diversion to be talking about  vascular plants here, but this is a terrific resource that should be promoted!) there is a lot of ancillary information --full taxonomic details, indigenousness (native species are lower case; exotics are all caps), wetness index (from USFWS wetlands delineation criteria), growth form, life span, and shade tolerance. For constructing working species lists this spreadsheet is a dream come true; simply add a "got it" column and you have a checklist!



Back to the mosses. Count the dots on each of the 405 dot maps in the Ohio Catalog and Atlas, then enter the numbers into a new "CTYS" column on the spreadsheet, sort (descending) by CTYS and it looks like this.