Neckera complanata

Today I have been looking at a little fragment of moss I collected in Branscombe, Devon, in early July. It was one of several collected together from a shaded bank along the side of a bridleway, with thin soil and loose flints. 

Here it is at x10 from my dissecting microscope

I keyed it out using Watson's British Mosses and Liverworts but when I looked at the photos in the BBS field guide I remembered I had previously collected this species in Branscombe. On looking at my herbarium packet, I could see similarities, but I was unsure because it lacked the thread-like wispy branches that are seen in the BBS guide photo, although this fragment was a lot smaller.

However, microscopic identification was pretty certain, based on leaf shape and cells sizes. 

Here is a composite of the leaf at 100x, put together in GIMP. 

Clearly, you can see the joins, so I've got some work to do to learn how to adjust the exposures and colours, and annoyingly by the time I was taking these photos a bubble was growing at the side of the leaf 😞. However, I'm pretty pleased with it. Having paid a little bit more to have built-in cameras in my microscopes, I think I should get on and use them to make some reference pictures. I was glad to be able to compare these with some here: https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/gallery?taxon_key=2678588 to confirm the identification.

Now I have another four to identify from that same collection ...