ISOETES RESEARCH

Lytton John Musselman

My interest in the genus Isoetes goes back to a plant morphology course I took while a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In that course we studied the morphology and anatomy of quillworts. They fascinated me then and they still do. However, it was not until the early 1990's that I began to look for them in the field. Merritt Lyndon Fernald published a series of papers on his field work in southeastern Virginia and mentioned finding abundant Isoetes. Having worked in the area for decades, I was intrigued that I had never seen an Isoetes in southeastern Virginia. Encouraged by David Knepper, we looked along Three Creek in Southampton County and found hundreds of plants. Since that time, quillworts have turned up everywhere.

An essential member of our team is Dr Rebecca Bray who has studied the chromosome numbers of all the southern species of Isoetes. Khalid Al-Arid is looking at microspore development and we are excited that Sandy Boles has joined our group to offer her extensive expertise in molecular systematics.

My particular interest in the genus involves the surface feature of spores especially as it pertains to the systematics of the group. Another interest is in field work--simply finding these furtive plants is a challenge.

Recently, I have been studying populations of quillworts in Syria and Lebanon.

Work in South Africa has centered on a distinctive group of quillworts on the Gifberg. See Isoetes toximontana Novon Paper 2002. Information on other South African taxa can be found here.

Lytton John Musselman
25 January 2006
lmusselm@odu.edu