#moss fact

[cranberryspringart]

Turns out some moss IS edible

[mossinformed]

Mosses don’t have roots! Instead they have structures we call rhizoids that help them attach to whatever they feel like growing on. This is why mosses can start growing weird places where there isn’t dirt, they get their nutrients from rainwater/mist/dew.

This is from a Tom Cardy music video

[turtlesarecats]

Did you know that the tallest moss species only gets to ~20 inches?

Very accurate

[wild-moss-art]

Speaking of superlatives, have I ever posted about how I won the “mostly likely to trip over a yard line” superlative for all 4 years of high school marching band?

[mossinformed]

Mosses have teeth : )

So instead of flowers -which came hundreds of millions of years after mosses- mosses have capsules to hold spores. A little hat pops off the top of the capsule and you get these swirly sparkly structures that help scatter spores like a salt shaker! Those are the peristome “teeth”. The word “stoma” in peristome means mouth.

[mossinformed]

Pick an unsettling moss fact

In the 1600s, mosses were considered to be ‘aborted plant fetuses’

Fontinalis sp. can reach 2 meters in their aquatic habitat

The sporophyte is parasitic on the gametophyte (leafy part), haustoria & all

Mosses can survive decades in a filing cabinet with no light/water

Fontinalis dalecarlica can survive 2 weeks of boiling

Moss in Antarctic ice cores 1500 yrs old started growing protnema 22 days later

Some genes are fossils, and will never be turned back on (what do they DO?!)

I can’t pick/show results

Voting ended onJun 30, 2023

Source

[mossinformed]

Oh and here’s a good note too… they can’t even get up and move. (Spoilers: the bryophytes won)

[mossinformed]

Cursed Moss Fact #001

Peat bogs in Finland regenerate as slowly as 10cm (about 4 inches) PER THOUSAND years. So when ‘mining’ peat, regeneration is discussed on a geologic time scale. Sphagnum (aka “peat moss”) is a genus of moss that occupies 1/3 of all land (or about 3% of the total earths surface). Note, some peat has no Sphagnum, or is made of other mosses and detritus.

One peat bog in the Catskills is between 14,700 and 15,100 years old (source).

The peachy-yellow and pink moss in the photograph is Sphagnum growing in a mini-bog in a greenhouse. Read more about mosses in Bryophyte Ecology by Janice Glime (link on pinned post on our main page)