The other night I had a dream of princess pine, the clubmoss that looks like a perfectly formed miniature tree that was shining like a cascading emerald in the snow. Reflecting on the dream I realized that I had not written about Lycophyta, a family of vascular plants that are not mosses but appeared on earth around the same time, 400 million years ago (sources vary).

True mosses are non-vascular plants that have neither roots nor stems but rely on diffusion to receive nutrients directly from the substrate on which they are found (stone, trees, or ground). They belong to the family Bryophyta.

According to Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, scholar, writer, and plant scientist, true mosses were the first green plants to colonize land after lichens.

In contrast, clubmosses (Lycophyta) are vascular plants that have shallow roots and true stems and one of the ways they reproduce is by developing sporophytes. They look like furry candles as they rise out of the top of the plants. Look for the spores or ‘candles’ to appear during the late summer or fall.

This family is closely related to ferns.

It is a mystery to me how the family Lycophyta got the common name club moss. There is only one that vaguely resembles a club (?). Club mosses are a few inches high and have runners with roots attached that snake along the surface of the earth in areas free of foot traffic.

Learning how to recognize the varieties of ground-hugging plants with fuzzy evergreen bristles (small simple needle-like leaves that cover the stems), candles, trees, or umbrellas will help these plants survive because hiking through areas where they grow will kill them unless they are avoided. Logging, of course, destroys not only the plant but its connection to the mycelial network that is itself annihilated.

In this area, we are fortunate to have one species that is very rare which I have identified in one of my favorite forests.

The ones I am most familiar with occur frequently in coniferous forests, some in hardwood forests, and others in mountainous areas as well as marshlands (running club moss is more common in most places around here). My favorite is princess pine because as already mentioned it looks like a miniature tree. This species likes to grow in lowlands in rich moist soil. All clubmosses need some protection from the heat of the summer sun, so tree thinning can put these plants at risk.

When I first came here 40 years ago there were no clubmosses anywhere in the woods, but most of the trees were young except for the hemlocks. Now I have an abundance of running clubmoss, ground cedar, and princess pine probably because the trees have matured and I have left the forest alone.

We share more than 50 percent of our DNA with plants. The building blocks and shape of DNA molecules in humans, plants, and every living thing is the same,  (It’s the order of A,C,G,T that differs). All plants are our relatives – literally.

When I was a child I made Christmas wreaths from ground cedar, the club moss that looks somewhat like an umbrella, because in Pound Ridge we didn’t have balsam. I didn’t know then that harvesting ground cedar would become a commercial business with overharvesting, creating a need for these plants to be protected.  Now many states including Maine have restrictions on collecting club mosses because of human greed.

Clubmosses are important in the fossil records (today we have approximately 1000 species worldwide). In the past these plants grew as tall as trees, eventually dying, compacting, and forming the coal and oil deposits that we draw from today. Finite. Resources, that we will soon run out of. This family is the oldest group of vascular plants that remain extant. Just imagine what they could teach us if we could listen…

One fascinating aspect of these plants is that they can be used to make sound waves visible. Another curious fact is that when water is covered with the spore’s powder when a person inserts a finger into the mixture, it will come out dry. A third quality is that the dry spores are quite flammable and can be used to start a fire or create a magical illusion.

I think these ground covers are often overlooked, and yet they are fascinating plants. The next time you are in a healthy forest – one that has not been logged recently – pay attention to what’s going on beneath, around your feet and you will be rewarded by seeing these most ancient relations of ours creeping across the woodland floor.

Copy the Story Link

Comments are not available on this story.