Mosses are a very important part of the plant life of the planet. They were the first to colonize the terrestrial environment and, therefore, thanks to them later larger and more complex plants could appear and develop, such as vascular plants. Mosses usually grow on surfaces such as floors, rocks and trees, as well as being used to decorate interior spaces and, above all, exteriors.
If you want to know more about the different types of mosses and their main characteristics, keep reading us in this Green Ecologist article about what are mosses, their characteristics and examples of species.
Mosses are bryophytic non-vascular plants. Non-vascular plants are those that do not have xylems or phloemes that allow them to distribute water and nutrients through their structure. However, although they lack these complex structures, some mosses do have more basic and simple vascular tissues, with which to transport the water they collect internally.
The bryophyte plantsFurthermore, they are the most important group within the non-vascular plants. These are small plants, which tend to spread in the form of a tablecloth along surfaces that are sometimes quite extensive. They are chlorophyll plants, with which they can carry out photosynthesis and owe their generally green color to the chlorophyll pigments. Bryophyte plants are divided into liverworts, hornworts and mosses, which are the group that concerns us.
Learn more about Bryophyte Plants: examples and characteristics with this other Green Ecologist article.
These are the main characteristics of mosses:
Mosses have a sexual reproduction based on two alternate phases: haploid and diploid.
The part of the plant that we usually recognize as moss is the gametophyte, the generation haploid. The antheridium, which is the male sexual part of the plant, or the archegonium, which is the female sexual organ, develop in the gametophyte. When the antheridium breaks, it fertilizes the archegonium, which gives way to the phase diploid of the moss, in which a sporophyte develops. The sporophyte looks like a small capsule at the end of a stem that rises above the moss mantle, looking like a small flower.
This capsule contains spores, which will end up releasing for the water or the media to transport them to another place, where they will give rise to a protoneme, which will grow to form another gametophyte, thus returning to the predominantly haploid phase. Here we explain more about what spores are.
As mentioned above, mosses need plenty of moisture, so they tend to develop in humid and shady areas. They cling to the surface with their rhizoids, which are small root-like structures whose only function is to support them. They form carpets on rocks, mud, wood or on the floor of large forest masses, being an important part of the understory.
They play a very important role in colonization of land areas, since they are, together with lichens, the first to populate some areas and create organic matter that later will allow the development of more complex species.
Some mosses can stop their metabolism practically completely in drought conditions, to resume their activity for long periods of time later, as soon as they receive water again. They are also good indicators of air pollution, since some species are sensitive to it and serve as a marker.
The classification of mosses understands 8 classes: Bryopsida, Takakiopsida, Sphagnopsida, Polytrichopsida, Oedipodiopsida, Tetraphidopsida, Andreaeopsida and Andreaeobryopsida.
Within these classes, we find a large number of species o types of mosses, some of them quite known in a general way. The most common of these species is Bryopsida, which includes 95% of the mosses, thus being the most representative of this group of plants as well. Other mosses, such as those belonging to the Sphagnopsida class, commonly known as sphagnum, are easy to identify due to their particular appearance, reminiscent of small succulents. It is normal for their appearance to resemble them: they are capable of absorbing up to 20 times their weight in water.
These are some names of mosses:
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