When bryological sleuth Rebekah Smucker shows up in Ohio, one can be sure that she will find something interesting and small. This year, after the 2019 OMLA workshop to Ashtabula County, Becky stopped by Hocking County on her way home to North Carolina. Although she had a 7-hour drive ahead of her, she wanted to look for a moss that she and Dr. Paul Davison (University of North Alabama) are researching. That moss is Fissidens closteri, and to quote Becky “if you can see leaves, it’s not F. closteri.” The plants are minute and stemless. The setae are 1.2 mm long, and the capsules are 0.2 – 0.3 mm long (Crum and Anderson 1982).

After Becky described potential habitats, we began to search a few places around Hocking County. On sandstone pebbles in an abandoned lane, and again on moist sandstone rocks that had flaked off a small temporary waterfall, Becky found it. She taught me how to look for it: hold the small rock up to the light and look for sporophytes. With her help, I found it and a specimen is now housed in the Kent State University Herbarium (Andreas and Smucker 19738 KE).