Ian Worley
Southeastern Alaska Distribution: Widespread, local but occasionally abundant. Probably more common on the outer islands.
Habitat: Among other bryophytes on acidic rocks, or more rarely on peat over rock; in moist areas where occasionally shaded, in peat-land openings from near sea level to high in the subalpine or among rocks on cliffs and bluffs, rarely in forests.
Comments: Although the species is always sterile in southeastern Alaska it is reported from sites that unquestionably have been glaciated during the Pleistocene, hence mobility and the ability to expand into new ares relatively freely must be assumed for the species. This is one of the few species considered as a possible “local” relic that may have been able to exist upon nunataks.