ALTMosses are one of my favourite things! Little worlds unto themselves. The epitome of growing where you’re planted!
Soft, yet tenacious. Subtle and vibrant. Inspiring and beautiful!
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The ‘Mirky’ Wood
Whenever we go walking deep into Gisburn Forest, the dark and shadowy woodland always conjures up images of 'Mirkwood’, the great mystical forest east of the river Anduin in Rhovanion in J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
The floor of these woods are carpeted by fallen pine needles and leaves, but you’ll find dark green mosses everywhere.
Mosses are part of a group of plants known as 'bryophytes’. There are over 20,000 species of bryophyte on Earth, with over 1,000 species found in the UK.
Although these mosses live in the dark, shaded parts of the woodland, on the brief occasions that they are bathed in sunshine, it turns the mirky woodland into a truly magical place.
Photo images © Martin Williams
(No copying or printing images without prior permission).
Link
Mosses and More: Exploring the Bryophyte Flora of Kalikasan Park | InformativeBD
Mosses and More: Exploring the Bryophyte Flora of Kalikasan Park | InformativeBD
informative-bd.blogspot.com
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Archegonia (singular archegonium) and antheridia (singular antheridium) from a moss I was identifying. Both found on the same individual (autoicous) which further confirms my identification of Warnstorfia fluitans vs genus Sarmentypnum (latter is dioicous).
The organs are hidden in these little bud-like structures of leaves. One bud contains only one type of organ and they’re found on different branches or sections of the stem. I dissected everything out at 30x magnification then took the compound scope pics at 40x and 100x.
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Shoutout to mosses, liverworts, and hornworts for surviving every single mass extinction as well as the expansion and dominance of vascular plants and gymnosperms and angiosperms.
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Common Striated Feather-moss #moss
Eurhynchium striatum, provisional identification.
Picture taken December 23.
If you can help with identification, please leave a message below.
#mosses #plants #nature #naturephotography #woods #plant
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Moss - Musgo
Lisboa/Portugal (3/11/2025)
[Nikon D7100; AF 105mm Micro-Nikkor F2,8]
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Mosses and liverworts are ancient clades of land plant, and their presence as a living carpet, evokes pristine wild places in the human mind. So I think it unsurprising, that so many people appear to think a slice of streamside or forest floor in the living room, would feel inauthentic without the lushness of a real, primal, spreading moss. Or a liverwort - as people do tend to confuse these ancient groups. Both of which are restricted to a ‘mossy’ growth habit by their internal anatomy. For they lack the internal tissues necessary for other kinds of land plants - vascular plants - to become taller and more complex. Yet mosses are not a handful of relict species, surviving from a past geological age - they still grow everywhere, including urban environments. The earliest possible moss- or liverwort-like fossils date to the Canbrian, and such plants were definitely around later, during the Ordovician; but they are common even today. More newly evolved bauplans of vascularised plants, evolved to exploit niches, that had not been explored by plants before: the mosses and liverworts continued as they had before.
Carpeting an aquaterrarium or humid terrarium with living mosses, can be confusing for some people. But most of the non-aquatic mosses now sold for cultivation, are temperate species. This means they prefer a less warm environment, although most of these species would require and thrive in the year round humidity. For example the 'cushion moss’ most often offered - terms like 'cushion’ and 'carpet’ refer to growth habits, not to species - is Leucobryum glaucum, from Europe and eastern North America; it is also called a pillow, pincushion, and bun moss. Generally terrarium mosses are not well identified to a species or even genus L. glaucum likes medium light, high humidity, and the temperature of a temperate living room it’s watering should involve water that is distilled, or treated by reverse osmosis (like for carnivorous plants), and it does not grow underwater, but on a water retentive sunstrate
Fortunately there are mosses in the aquarium plant trade, that can and will grow and colonise wet soils, if they are allowed to grow out of the water. Dart frog enthusiasts commonly employ Java moss for this purpose. Not all aquatic mosses and liverworts, are suited to this; some of them are strictly aquatic by nature, such as Fontinalis antipyretica and Fissidens fontanus. Fortunately the Taxiphyllum and Vesicularia mosses - the nexus of Java mosses and their allies - do grow emersed in nature, and will therefore grow in a humid terrarium; that and they are more likely to thrive in the warm temperatures of a tropical aquaterrarium or rainforest biotope vivarium. Especially one in which there is a lightly trickling waterfall, to increase the humidity. However the creation and maintainence of such miniature water features is not recommended for amateurs, and a misting system - or simply regular spraying, is suggested instead
The liverwort Monoselenium tenerum, which is easily mistaken for a true moss, also grows on the wet and shady banks of streams. (Historically M. tenerum was misidentified by the aquarium trade as a species of Pellia, and is still traded as 'pellia moss’) Two more familiar liverworts, the crystalworts Riccia fluitans and R. renana, are each able to produce their terrestrial morphs when they grow on soil, as well as their well known, floating and attached aquatic morph. Another aquarium liverwort that is less often available, Ricciocarpus natans, also produces a terrestrial morph. But another, Riccardia chamaedryfolia, is associated more strongly with running waters, but it’s not always growing emersed where it is recorded in the splash zone, or on very damp, dripping rocks in ravines. I would say R. chamaedryfolia is not suitable for most humid terrariums, and I would regard it as I do Fontinalis, as a specialized, stream associated freshwater species.
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Scenes from Summer: A Lodgepole pine cone rests on the forest floor, alder cones glimmer in the sunlight, a mountain stream sings over cool mosses.
© riverwindphotography, September 2025
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Mosses and lichens at the Little Grand Canyon
Shawnee National Forest - June 2025
