Word Finder - mosses

definition

Any of various small, green, seedless plants growing on the ground or on the surfaces of trees, stones, etc.; now specifically, a plant of the phylum Bryophyta (formerly division Musci).

definition

A kind or species of such plants.

definition

Any alga, lichen, bryophyte, or other plant of seemingly simple structure.

example

Irish moss

definition

A bog; a fen.

example

the mosses of the Scottish border

definition

To become covered with moss.

example

An oak whose boughs were mossed with age.

definition

To cover (something) with moss.

The leaves of most mosses are flat plates, each consisting of a single layer of square or oblong assimilating (chlorophyllous) cells.

Ferns and mosses are almost confined to the higher ranges.

Mosses when growing in tufts should be gathered just before the capsules have become brown, divided into small flat portions, and pressed lightly in drying paper.

Grasses, mosses and Arctic flowering plants are abundant, but there are no trees excepting occasional dwarf willows.

The union of the germ nuclei has now been observed in all the main groups of Angiosperms, Gymnosperms, Ferns, Mosses, Algae and Fungi, and presents a striking resemblance in all.

The leaves of the true mosses and those of the club-mosses (Lycopodium, Selaginella) being somewhat alike in general appearance and in ontogeny, might be, and indeed have been, regarded as homologous on that ground.

However, they belong respectively to two different forms in the life-history of the plants; the leaves of the mosses are borne by the gametophyte, those of the club-mosses by the sporophyte.

Below the mountain crests, where only the hardiest lichens and mosses can survive, comes a belt of large timber, including many giant trees, 200 ft.

Tiny mosses, hardy ferns or miniature bulbs will add extra interest.

The flora consists of 129 species of angiosperms, i Cycas, 22 ferns, and a few mosses, lichens and fungi, 17 of which are endemic, while a considerable number - not specifically distinct - form local varieties nearly all presenting Indo-Malayan affinities, as do the single Cycas, the ferns and the cryptogams. As to its fauna, the island contains 319 species of animals-54 only being vertebrates-145 of which are endemic. A very remarkable distributional fact in regard to them, and one not yet fully explained, is that a large number show affinity with species in the Austro-Malayan rather than in the Indo-Malayan, their nearer, region.

The flora includes purslane, rock roses and several species of ferns and mosses.

In one or two cases Palaeozoic plants, resembling the true Mosses in habit, have been discovered; the best example is the Muscites polytrichaceus of Renault and Zeiller, from the Coal Measures of Commentry.

This is probably homologous with the hydrom cylinder in the stems of other mosses.

The structure of the stomata of the sporophyte of vascular plants is fundamentally the same as that of the stomata on the sporogonium of the true mosses and of the liverwort A nihoceros.

The stelar system of Vascular Plants has no direct phylogenetic connection with that of the mosses.

The cylinder is surrounded by a mantle of one or more layers of parenchymatous cells, the pericycle, and the xylem is generally separated from the phloem in the stem by a similar layer, the mesocycle (corresponding with the amylom sheath in mosses).

The forests throughout most of the state have a luxuriant undergrowth consisting of a great variety of shrubs, flowering plants, grasses, ferns and mosses, and the display of magnolias, azaleas, kalmias, golden rod, asters, jessamines, smilax, ferns and mosses is often one of unusual beauty.

The timber resources of Alaska are untouched 2 280 species of mosses proper, of which 46 were new to science, and 16 varieties of peat moss (Sphagnum) were listed by the Harriman expedition; and 74 species or varieties of ferns.

The birch and larch woods of this zone give way to pine forests as the altitude increases; and the pines to mosses, lichens and alpine plants, just below the jagged iron-grey peaks, many of which attain altitudes of 6000 to 8000 ft.

Wet land, if in grass, produces only the coarser grasses, and many subaquatic plants and mosses, which are of little or no value for pasturage; its herbage is late in spring, and fails early in autumn; the animals grazed upon it are unduly liable to disease, and sheep, especially, to foot-rot and liver-rot.

Covered with snow for the greater part of the year, and growing nothing but lichens, mosses and some scanty grass, the South Shetlands are of interest almost solely as a haunt of seals, albatrosses, penguins and other sea-fowl.

About one tenth of the land is covered by forests, which give place, at an altitude of 5000 ft., to lichens and mosses.

The geological history of Mosses and Liverworts is at present very incomplete, and founded on few and generally unsatisfactory fragments.

Mosses are extremely rare, Heer only describing 3 species.

This deposit shows no trace of forest-trees, but it is full of remains of Arctic mosses, and of the dwarf willow and birch; in short, it yields the flora now found within the Arctic circle.

Plants include mosses eg Sphagnum, cotton grass, purple moor grass, cranberry, marsh cinquefoil, marsh violet and round leaved sundew.

In high summer, the dried lichens and mosses give the dunes a very crunchy texture, which is almost like walking on crisps.

Sphagnum mosses are the main vegetation, often forming hummocks which are raised half a meter above the main surface.

Fontinalis is one of only a few completely aquatic mosses in North America.

Repair or build a drystane dike to provide shelter for animals and plants such as wall rue, lichens or mosses.

Species include bottle sedge, common cotton sedge, devil's-bit scabious and marsh violet growing over layers of Sphagnum mosses and brown mosses.

Plants include wood sorrel, wood anemone and a wide variety of mosses, lichens and fungi.

In the first place, they lessen the number of separate facts to be explained; in the second, they limit the field within which explanation must be sought, since, for instance, if a particular mode of repetition of parts occur in mosses, in flowering-plants, in beetles and in elephants, the seeker of ultimate explanations may exclude from the field of his inquiry all the conditions individual to these different organic forms, and confine himself only to what is common to all of them; that is to say, practically only the living material and its environment.

The Mosses and Liverworts (see BRYOPHYTA) include forms with a more or less leaf-like thallus, such as many of the liverworts, and forms in which the plant shows a differentiation into a stem bearing remarkably simple leaves, as in the true mosses.

Within the limits of the sporophyte generation the Pteridophytes and Phanerogams also differ from the Bryophytes in possessing special assimilative and transpiring organs, the leaves, though these organs are developed, as we have seen, in the gametophyte of many liverworts and of all the mosses.

The origin of the Pteridophyta (q.v.) is very obscure, but it may be regarded as certain that it is not to be sought among the mosses, which are an extremely specialized and peculiarly differentiated group. Furthermore, both the hydrom and leptom of Pteridophytes have marked peculiarities to which no parallel is to be found among the Bryophytes.

But there is reason to believe that they have been differentiated quite independently in various groups, such as the Marchantiaceae, the Jungermanniaceae, and the mosses proper; consequently their phylogeny is not the same, they are polyphyletic, and therefore they are not completely homologous, but are parallel developments.

In the north, where the lichen-covered or ice-shaven rocks do not protrude, the ground is covered with a carpet of mosses, creeping dwarf willows, crow berries and similar plants, while the flowers most common are the andromeda, the yellow poppy, pedicularis, pyrola, &c. besides the flowering mosses; but in South Greenland there is something in the shape of bush, the dwarf birches even rising a few feet in very sheltered places, the willows may grow higher than a man, and the vegetation is less arctic and more abundant.

In Yakutsk the tundra vegetation consists principally of mosses of the genera Polytrichum, Bryum and Hypnum.

Observed originally by Engelmann in bacteria, by Stahl in myxomycetes, and by Pfeffer in ferns, mosses, &c., it has now become recognized as a widespread phenomenon.

In habits the kakapo is almost wholly nocturnal, 3 hiding in holes (which in some instances it seems to make for itself) under the roots of trees or rocks during the day time, and only issuing forth about sunset to seek its food, which is solely vegetable in kind, and consists of the twigs, leaves, seeds and fruits of trees, grass and fern roots - some observers say mosses also.

The bark of tupelos is roughly furrowed, so that it is often the host for mosses and lichens.

The Mosses and Liverworts include forms with a more or less leaf-like thallus, such as many of the liverworts, and forms in which the plant shows a differentiation into a stem bearing remarkably simple leaves, as in the true mosses.

In the highest family of mosses, Polytrichaceae, the differentiation of conducting tissue reaches a decidedly higher level.

Hooker enumerated twenty-one species of flowering plants, and seven of ferns, lycopods, and Characeae; at least seventyfour species of mosses, twenty-five of Hepaticae, and sixty-one of lichens are known, and there are probably many more.

But almost everywhere the vegetation serves to smooth the contours of the rugged hills, ferns, mosses and shrubs growing wherever their roots can cling, and leaving only the steepest crags uncovered to form, as in Tahiti, a striking contrast.

The Pacific coast Transition zone is noted for its forests of giant conifers, principally Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, Pacific cedar and Western hemlock, Here, too, mosses and ferns grow in profusion, and the sadal (Gaultheria shailon), thimble berry (Rubus nootkamus), salmon berry (Rubus spectabilis) and devils club, (Fatsia horr-ida) are characteristic shrubs.

Their food is entirely vegetable, especially grass roots and stalks, shoots of dwarf birch, reindeer lichens and mosses, in search of which they form, in winter, long galleries through the turf or under the snow.

The simplest leaf is found in some mosses, where it consists of a single layer of cells.

It is only amongst the lower classes of plants - Mosses, Characeae, &c. - that all the leaves on a plant are similar.