A new assessment of Aotearoa’s mosses shows about a third of our 560-odd species are classified as at risk or threatened, with 16 deemed “nationally critical”. One of the most precarious is Lindbergia maritima, thought to live in only one spot: particular rocks at Auckland’s Piha Beach.
Pictured here is a moss spotted just up the road in the Waitākare Ranges. From the thriving family Macromitrium, it’s stitching itself across a section of kauri trunk that’s been exposed by falling bark—and pushing up scarlet sporophytes, to seed the next generation.
