Mosses Can Be Usefull

Most people see mosses as weeds or unwanted plants that "take over" their gardens and "kill" their plants, however mosses are exactly the opposite. Mosses can not only be beneficial to your plants in your garden, but you can have a garden with JUST moss and have it look just as lush and beautiful.

Due to the fact that mosses are opportunistic, growing where there is available space, they grow where most plants cannot. When you see moss in your lawn, the moss is not stopping the grass from growing there, the grass just doesn’t grow there well, most likely because it is too shady and wet. Moss can be great for lawns, it is very soft and comfortable to walk on, and it absorbs much more water than grass, so if flooding is a problem in your lawn, mosses can help.

Mosses can also grow on just about any substrate, such as rocks, trees, and cement. If you would like a very green garden, try allowing the moss to grow between the spaces in the walkways to your gardens, and, if possible, find some granite rock (mosses love to grow on granite), it can provide your garden with the desired green, without taking up any soil space. Mosses can be planted in planters as well, if a moveable small area of moss is desired.

Mosses not only provide us with great gardens and lush lawns, they also have many other uses around the world. During WWI, cotton bandages were sparse and needed to be conserved for cleaning rifles, so Sphagnum moss was used in place of it. Sphagnum was found to be very beneficial due to the fact that this type of moss is extremely absorbent and has mild antibiotic properties.

Mosses have also been used for bedding and stuffing furniture, if you don't believe me, lay outside on a nice bed of Climacium, it will be very soft and warm on a nice sunny day. Mosses have also been used to stuff toys, clean pots and pans, made into filters for pipes, and made into door mats. Insects are not fond of the taste of moss, so in some cultures, mosses are dried, ground up, and sprinkled over certain items to keep the insects out. Mosses have been used in treating illnesses such as a fever and inflamation, treating the common cold, mosquito bites, and kidney stones. Please note that most of the medical uses for mosses are based on folklore-based information and are not considered proper treatment for any illness.

Today mosses are used for creating a "greener" planet by using them on roofs. This provides communities with a greater variety of fauna and flora, helps with drainage, keeps the temperature of your house warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer, and looks great. In Germany, mosses are stuffed into boots when they get wet, because they have great absorptive abilities, and can be easily discarded. Keep that in mind next time you go hiking, just make sure that you don't grab a wet moss! Speaking of hiking, if you ever get lost in the woods and are dying for a drink of water, literally dying, look for your nearest moss, and squeeze it. I did this last time I went hiking and more water is held in them than you think (especially the cushion mosses).

Honestly, before I took my ecology of mosses class, I just looked at mosses like they were moss. They all looked the same to me and they all just seemed like less important plants. I now realize that without mosses a lot of the earth would be bare, many invertebrate animals would be without homes, birds would have less with which to make their nests, and the world would simply be a lot less green. Next time you go outside to put the garbage out or walk to your car, pay attention to the mosses that you see. Stop and take a moment to apreciate the little non vascular plants that make our world a more beautiful place, you might be suprised what you find!

Anastasia Labuda

Of Moss and Men: an Introduction to Bryophytes

Mosses (Bryophyta) have to be one of the most common and least known groups of organisms in the world. Actually, they are second only to the flowering plants (Magnoliophyta). But what is a moss? I mean, what truly makes it unique from other organisms. In order to appreciate the intricacies and beauty that is a moss you have to shrink, smaller than dog, smaller then a cat, smaller then a mouse, you need to get right down to past ant size. I guess the best size to be would the size Wayne Szalinski got his kids down to in the classic 1989 movie, Honey I Shrunk the Kids.

The group shares many characteristics with flowering plants as well as green algae (Chlorophyta), and they are actually thought to be the first plants to make it to land. However the major characteristic that sets them apart from the flowering plants we are familiar with is their genetic make up. The vegetative structures (leaves, stem, rhizoids, ect.) of mosses are made up of one set of chromosomes (1n). The greenish moss you see every day is referred to as the gametophyte. The reproductive body consists of two sets of chromosomes (2n) and is referred to as the sporophyte. This is opposed to two sets of chromosomes for the vegetative structures of vascular plants and one set for their reproductive structures.

Also, unlike flowering plants, mosses have no roots or vascular system (xylem and phloem), but some have hydroids and leptoids, which are similar to xylem and phloem. What they do have is a set of rhizoids that anchor the plant to the ground, and their water conduction is mainly done on the external surface of the moss leaf. Since the moss leaf is usually only one cell layer thick, water conduction is not that much of a problem. Mosses are nature’s tribute to capillary action. The thing that makes the mosses absolutely astounding is their poikilohydric ability (“poikilo”– changing; “hyrdic” – water). They can dry up, and as soon as there is water available, they just spring back to life.

However, unlike their ancestors the algae, they have a more complex reproductive process. In algae and mosses, the zygote is unicellular and surrounded by multicellular layer. The difference is that in algae, the zygote doesn’t develop further until it leaves the parent plant. In mosses, the zygote develops in the multicellular archegonium before dispersing from the mother. Another factor that separates the mosses from the algae is that mosses have biflagellate sperm. That is their sperm have two flagella like tails. Like their aquatic ancestors, their sperm still need a continuous film of water to travel through to reach the egg.

There are two other taxonomic groups that that are closely related to the mosses. These groups are the liverworts (Marchantiophyta) and the hornworts (Anthocerotophyta). When first looking at a moss, you can see there are two main types. There are those that stand upright which are known as acrocarps and those that grow along the substrate which are known as pleurocarps. Mosses can grow in many different arrangements relative to these two types. These include cushions, small turfs, tall turfs, smooth mats, rough mats, wefts, and dendriods. The diversity of forms in which they come is only matched by the diversity of habitats in which they occupy. The only place on earth that doesn’t have mosses is the ocean, and the substrates on which they grow rage from soil to sand to rocks and trees.

So, in short, mosses are common plants that are generally overlooked due to their small stature. They occupy a wide variety of habitats and come in all sorts of shapes and forms. They could be considered to be the most successful terrestrial plant due to their distribution, their small yet intricate design and their ability to come back from the “dead.” In one word…they are truly “moss-ome.”

Santino Lauricella

Bryoblitz 2010

If you’re like me, mosses are probably the last thing you have thought about, unless you’re looking for a place to nap on a hike through the woods. However, as I have come to learn this year, they wondrous organisms whose diversity is greater than the places they inhabit and  deserve the same attention and respect as any other life form. 

While it is important to appreciate them and acknowledge them, one can also help protect them by saving their habitat. The only way to begin doing this is to find out where they live. This is the responsibility donned by a few of the students in Dr. Robin Kimmerer’s Ecology of Mosses class this year. Their mission is to collect samples and identify the bryophytes that inhabit Syracuse and the surrounding area.

The team consists of Andy Cortese, Jake Bakowski, Gabe Kellman, Noah Beck, Pete Delaney, and Carrie Cimo. This ambitious group will be surveying at least three different locations, Thornden Park, Wescott St., and the area around I-81 with the hope of a few more locations that are yet to be decided. Their goals are two-fold: (1) to catalogue the species diversity in order to identify similarities and differences in community composition and (2) to provide insight into their effects in urban / suburban ecology.

This project has already begun and will continue for the next few weeks. If you are interested to see what moss lives in your neck of the woods, stop by the ESF campus for their Earth Day celebration on April 23, 2010 for music, fun and an all around “moss-ome” time.

Santino Lauricella

Ecology of Mosses 2010

The Ecology of Mosses class at ESF endeavors each year to bring some of what we learn to the wider community through a service learning project. This blog was created this year in order to help present the details of our activities as well as some general information related to mosses. 

The course, itself, is made up of lecture and lab meant for students to obtain an understanding and appreciation for bryophytes. The term bryophyte is a general name for a group of primitive plants (mosses, liverworts, and hornworts). The course is designed to mix classroom knowledge with hands on activities. Class lecture helps students develop an understanding of moss morphology as well as the part mosses play within ecosystems. In class, Dr. Robin Kimmerer, a well known bryophyte ecologist, leads course discussions. She uses basic ecological concepts to push students to use what they have learned and apply it to real scientific questions.

 

             Dr. Robin Kimmerer leads the class on many bryoadventures. She uses her vast repository of knowledge to communicate the intricacies of mosses to her students. To reinforce her lectures, Dr. Kimmerer uses a couple of different texts.  These include the highly descriptive online text book Bryophyte Ecology by Dr. Janice M. Glime. She also utilizes a book which she has written, called Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Moss.  This book explores mosses in a fashion different from Bryophyte Ecology in that it gives insight about mosses and their ecology using a format more akin to a story than a college style textbook.

            Hopefully, the following posts will help inform you about mosses in general and encourage you to participate in some of our service learning activities this year!

Eric Patch