Moss and lichens – LinuxParty

2024-08-19 06:00:00

Mosses and lichens are two groups of relatively small plants that often grow together and can be confused with each other. The truth is that they are not related at all.

Los Moss They are leafy, flowerless plants that usually grow on neat green pads or carpets and in shaded or shaded areas. If you examine and look carefully you will see that each group is made up of many separate stems, a few centimeters long. Each stem has several very delicate leaves, but no real root. At certain times of the year you can see tight bunches of leaves that look like flowers. Male and female cells are made.

Fertilization cannot occur in dry conditions, which is why mosses are only found in moist habitats, although some can survive severe drought. After fertilization, the female cell changes into a spornagium, which rises from the pedicel at the tip of the moss stem. The tender sparagium can be erect or pendulous, but always has a kind of hood. This finally falls, revealing another small hat. As the spores mature inside, the cap comes off one way or another and in many species a row of radiate teeth is exposed.

Experiment: The teeth are sensitive to moisture and stay closed in damp weather, but if you collect some capsules and dry them on the outside you will see the teeth curve back to allow the spores to escape. After shaking some spores onto the blotting paper, keep it moist and you will see the spores emit small filaments, from which new mosses will grow.

Los PAGE They are extremely resistant organisms consisting of the “alliance” of fungus (microbiont) and algae (photobiont) in perfect symbiosis. The Fungus provides protection against drying and solar radiation and the Alga provides its photosynthetic capacity.

The dominant colors in lichens are gray and green, but there are also red and orange species.

They can be found from high mountain gorges, where they rarely exceed the freezing point, to growing on rocks where the sun shines so strongly that they are too hot to touch. We can also find them on coastal cliffs, walls, tree trunks and high soils of empty land.

Although lichens are highly resistant to atmospheric conditions and their ability to adapt to low-nutrient environments makes them primary colonizers of almost all known ecosystems, there is one environmental condition that they tolerate very poorly : pollution. Therefore, she does not tend to find lichens in big cities, but in some small towns and cities where the air you breathe is purer. They are excellent bioindicators or indicators of environmental conditions, since they do not have roots, they have to extract all the nutrients from the atmosphere, including the pollutants that easily accumulate inside. Therefore, they are the perfect watchmen for air quality and our health.

Experiment: Starting from the center of a large city and moving slightly outside it, at convenient intervals, we count the number of lichen plaques we find on walls and tree trunks. As we progress and move away from pollution, more lichens will appear.

Source, Naturablog, Moss and lichens.