Diane Auberry, age 13 of Hayesville, her questions
What is moss?
Mosses are dainty little plants. They are more complex than the simple seaweeds and less complex than the ferns. There are some 14,000 different varieties and they are classed in the plant family called Bryophite. This elegant family name is coincd from two Greek words, bryon, meaning moss and phyte meaning plants.
No moss is more than a few inches tall. When you look at their delicate foliage, you might think they are fragile plants, unable to cope with any kind of hardship. This is not so at all. The mosses were among the first plants to live on the dry land and they were the very first to stand upright, They have been leading successful lives on land for perhaps 300 million years.
We find mosses growing in the most unexpected places. One variety grows more than 100 feet below the surface of Lake Geneva. Other kinds live in polar regions where they are buried under the snow for most of the year. Still others live in the warm waters of geysers and hot spring‑s. There are mosses high on bleak mountain tops and deep in the gorges. Some mosses can even survive in the deserts.
Countless mosses, of course, make their homes in the deep shady forests, Some grow under the tall grass in the meadows or fill up the bare patches on shady lawns. Some live in swamps. In fact, they help to create swamps. Generations of these mosses, growing one upon another, mix with the mud and turn stagnant pools into swamps and bogs.
Mosses, it seems, can make themselves at home almost everywhere except in salt sea water. Perhaps this is because they do not ask too much of life. The soil may be poor and they need less sunlight than most green plants. They need a lot of water, but this they are able to store because their matted foliage acts like a sponge.
A velvety carpet of moss is usually a cluster of several moss plants. A single moss plant grows from a thread lying on the ground. This is called the protonema. Countless little sprays of green foliage grow up from it to form the thick pile of the mossy carpet. Numerous short fine threads also sprout from the protonema,. They act to anchor the plant tot he ground and take in moisture. They are not true roots and they are called rhysoids.
The simple moss plant has no true roots, true stems or true leaves. Nor does it bear flowers. k hump of vivid green pincushion moss is sometimes decked with tiny yellow headed pins. You might mistake these pins for blossoms, but you would be wrong. Actually they are spore cases. When ripe, they will break open and scatter their clouds of tiny spores on the breezes. A few, a very few, of these little spores will become seedlets, settle in the right spot, grow their own protonemas and sprout new carpets of moss.