Connie Robertson, age 10, of Dakota City Iowa, for her question:

 What kind of plant is moss?

Mother Nature s carpet is made of moss. She is a good housekeeper and a good housekeeper puts down the carpet before she moves in the heavy furniture. Mother Nature decided to furnish the bare land many millions of years ago. At that time all living things more in the sea. They had to learn to live on the dry land in easy stages.

First came the bacteria and the algae. They chewed up the powdered rocks and made the first soil. Now the land was ready to support more complex plants. These were the mosses. They thrived and spread wherever there was soil and moisture. The bare earth was clothed with vast stretches of velvety green carpet.

As the mosses Crew they improved the soil and added oxygen to the airy They used sunshine and water to make food and used the food for their growth. In the process, they poured oxygen into the air. Their tender green foliage died, decayed and added its valuable chemicals to the ground. The living carpet of moss helped make the soil suitable for more complex plants and for the arrival of the animals.

There are over 13,000 varieties of moss and they grow almost everywhere. There are mosses on the cold, bitter peaks of Antarctica, in the deserts and in the tropics. One variety grows under the deep waters of a Swiss Take. But most mosses grow in damp, shady places. They cling to stones besides the streams, to old lofts and shady tree trunks. They grow on the forest floor under old leaves and sometimes hide their vivid green under the snow.

Study the beautiful foliage of the various mosses under a magnifying glass. The pincushion moss is a velvety hump. The fern moss is a rug of miniature fern‑like foliage. The juniper hair‑cap moss is a mass of leafy spikes.

Mosses are simple, flowerless plants. The yellow‑headed pins you see on the pincushion moss are really spore cases. They are just about ready to scatter their dusty spores into the wind. Each little spore has two parents and the process of making the spores is very complex.

The cells for making new plants are of two sorts. Sometimes one plant produces both tolls. More often the parents are two different plants. The papa produces antheridia cells, the mama produces archegonia cells. These cells grow at the top of the leafy foliage. The antheridia cells wait for the dew or the rain. Then they swim off to join the archegonia cells. The next stage develops in the mama’s crown of foliage, slender stem grows and at its top is a drooping head. The head is a spore case shaped like a pepper shaker. The holes are spaces between a circle of teeth. The shaker is sealed with a neat pointed cap, then the spores are ready the cap pops off. The spore case shakes out the little spores in a dusty cloud. Off they float on a breeze to find a damp, shady patch of ground, There they grow fragile green threads which act as roots.

From these threads sprout the springy green moss to make another patch of Mother Nature's carpet.