# Interesting moss (several medium pics)



## dirtmonkey (Feb 10, 2007)

I'm posting about this hoping someone who knows mosses well might be able to help narrow down an ID; I'm going to write a lot, so be warned, it might be boring to anyone not fascinated by all the little details being archived on the WWW for all time  

As it recovers from the dry storage it's been in, I'm also going to attempt culturing it in sheets and plugs- without perlite this time- for trading in 2010 (I've only sent a small piece to one person so far, but lost track of who). I'm interested in collecting a wide range of tropical mosses that do well in warm terraria and vivaria, and trying to identify them as much as possible.

I found this moss on a Sinningia tuber collected in Brazil, but the tuber changed hands in Sarasota, Florida (at Selby), and had been growing in the plant room of a Portland, Oregon gesneriad collector for several years. I can never be sure of its provenance.

The most unusual thing about it is the way it spreads. After planting a piece, the green parts do nothing, but a fuzzy brownish growth spreads out from the section for several weeks along the surface at a pretty fast rate, relative to its small size. I haven't measured exact speeds or conditions yet. It reminds me a lot of mushroom mycelium, just the wrong color.

After the "fuzz" has grown a while, then the gametophytes start popping up in it. Thinly at first, then more and more until it gets crowded. The individual leafy gametophytes are a beautiful (to me) pure green color, live indefinitely, and stay very short. Under bright light they remain around 5mm tall, though they will stretch over 1cm pretty quickly in dimmer lighting.

I have never seen a sporophyte form. Either it needs some environmental trigger it hasn't gotten yet, or the moss is dioecious and this clone is female.

It grows flat relative to many other mosses that show up in my plants, which is useful in terrariums where there are very small things that tend to get buried like _Sinningia pusilla_. If established first, it will also prevent the taller fine moss, that seems to always grow under the _pusilla_ and its hybrids, from taking over.

Another nice thing about this is that it will grow on several different substrates; I've had it on sphagnum peat moss, mixed potting soil (both with and without dolomite for pH buffering), on chunks of bark and wood, and on EpiWeb (on EpiWeb it had jumping-off points from bark or soil). It stays flat enough not to wipe out the main shapes of what it grows on. When grown around Orchid roots, it did not seem to cause any rot or growth problems, even when the plant and moss were never fertilized. The photo of _Lepanthes telipogoniflora_ is of the orchid growing on a chunk of EpiWeb, sitting on bark pieces, with roots overgrown with this moss. I've never had to do any trimming to keep it short.

The small bubble bowl in my hand is the same one the orchid used to be in, before it got killed while someone else was taking care of it. The bowl was then stuck in a box in storage for a long time (maybe over a year), totally dried out. I covered and watered it again just out of curiosity, and the moss grew back in a month or so. All of it I have now is started from that recovering bowl. The hole now in the middle is where I pulled out a small _Sinningia_ tuber a few days ago. I've stuck another piece of bark in there to be colonized.

The one thing this moss really hates is dry air. It immediately goes dormant and seems to disappear in just a few days. Even though it seems to survive a long time, it takes a while to get going again after drying out. It looked like the green parts all died entirely and it had to grow new ones, not just reviving the dried leafy parts like many mosses can. It's definitely not something that will take over your houseplants!

OK here are the pics:



















My first colony of it. I had pulled apart the original little piece I got and put it around this _Lepanthes telipogoniflora_. This is several weeks later, showing mostly the initial brownish fuzzy growth with a few upright gametophytes starting to grow in.



















Original bowl mostly recovered after a long time dried out in a storage unit.



















Plugs and growth several weeks later.



















More growth from plugs.




























Shots of the "fuzz" growing up on glass and forming upright sporophytes.

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Maybe this stuff is common somewhere, but I've never seen it so it seems special to me!

Vincent


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## RarePlantBroker (Aug 3, 2008)

Vincent, please let me know when you have some "extra" moss available. I'd love to give this a try in a couple of my tanks. It would be nice to have something around my Lepanthes that didn't smother them!


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## JoshH (Feb 13, 2008)

I had that years ago, it spreads wonderfully. It grew on rocks, wood, even dirty glass. The type I had would dry out and revive completely too. Good stuff....


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## JDowns (Sep 5, 2009)

Best guess some form of Pottiaceae. Which commonly gets lumped as Star Moss. Possibly a Hyophila or Barbula. 

Good place to start.

Genera Report | USDA PLANTS


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## dirtmonkey (Feb 10, 2007)

Wow, years of wondering and now I have great replies in minutes! I think I love this place. I'll start the hunt now, thank you. JDowns- I had noticed the similarity to what's being sold as 'Star Moss' for aquariums even though it's a temperate dry land moss, but never thought to look up other "star" mosses.

Edit again: It looks like at least some of the Pottiaceae can adapt to being flushed- er- submerged. I'm going to fish out a bit and try that right now.


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