OK, so what's the fuss about moss?
I know hardly anything about mosses - like what this might be, or what the necessary characters for identification would be. I suspect, though, that for identification you would need even more magnified images of well prepared leaf tips... it won't be anything rare, though. In fact, Erik Ljungstrand was able to tell, just from the images on the web, that this is a sampling of Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus.
Tomas Hallingbäck has kindly provided me with some photos of identified mosses for my imagenary experiments. Here is the first: an Orthotrichum scanicum.
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I mean, if you can extract a handful of it from a scan in 25 minutes, like this for a general impression,
then it's mostly a matter of selecting and preparing the sample for scanning a bit more professionally, isn't it? No need for all the drama about how moss is so hard. The two stems below were extracted in fifteen minutes...
(back to entrance)
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| The flatbed scanner has its advantages when you want to capture
stuff for extraction by the methods
I use for my S-weeds - not least get a clean background more or
less for free - but for many things the scanner is not as practical
as a camera: you can use the camera in situ, and it can be used
for stuff that does not fit easily on to the scanner bed. Extracting
from photos... well, yes, I suppose it can be done. In my experience
stuff broken out of a photo tend to look flat, compared to scanned
stuff. I'm working on it. |
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