Mosses from Lower Alabama and Mississippi

Of the five states bordering on the Gulf of Mexico only one, Mississippi, has never received any attention with regard to its moss flora. By way of contrast, it may be noted that to the east the mosses of Florida have received considerable notice in the past, with a checklist published in 1944 by Schornherst (Breen) and a moss flora of the state, but recently published (1963) after many years of work, by the same author. Numerous other papers by many authors have also contributed to our knowledge of the mosses of Florida. The neighboring state of Alabama has a checklist of its bryophytes, published in 1901 by Charles Mohr, which, although badly out of date nomenclaturally, is of course very useful. A paper by Romm (1937) and several intriguing reports by Harvill (1949, 1950, 1951, 1952) have added further to our knowledge of the mosses of Alabama. The mosses of the next state to the west, Mississippi, have apparently never been reported on at all, save for a very few scattered references to individual species in monographs and floras. Although there is no recent, overall compilation of the mosses of Louisiana, Koch (1956) has brought together the many references to this most interesting moss flora so that there is now a good basis for further work. Finally, for the state of Texas, there is the valuable catalogue of mosses by Whitehouse and McAllister (1954) which, although admittedly incomplete, nevertheless presents a very enlightening picture of the bryogeography of the state.