Why do mosses need moisture

A large fern may require watering daily, while a small fern in the bathroom — where the humidity is high — may require less frequent watering. The key is to water the fern before the soil dries, but to avoid soggy soil.

This means good drainage is vital to the health of indoor ferns. Coffee grounds are not good for ferns. Using liquid coffee, used or fresh coffee grounds or any other coffee based product as fertilizer for your ferns will inhibit the growth of the plants.

A limited number of ferns tolerate full sunlight; however, frequent watering and consistently moist soil is critical. Sun-tolerant ferns include cinnamon fern Osmunda cinnamomea which reaches heights of 24 to 36 inches and grows in USDA zones 2 through Ferns are gross feeders and fertilisers are best applied during the warm months when plants are growing.

Blood and bone or liquid organic fertilisers such as fish emulsion are suitable. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Thanksgiving Why do mosses and ferns need water? Ben Davis March 25, Why do mosses and ferns need water? Why do ferns and mosses need to live in wet areas? What adaptations do mosses and ferns have? Why do Mosses only live in wet places? Why do Mosses need to be close to a water source?

It is easy to differentiate the larger female megaspore from the smaller male microspore. The sperm of seed plants have no flagella. They lack antheridia, and only a few still have an archegonia. Unlike the more primitive ferns and fern allies, seed plants are mostly dioecious , having separate male and female plants.

In many of these primitive plants, certain leaves are specialized for reproduction. These modified leaves, or sporophylls , bear the sporangia at their bases. These sporophylls usually branch out from a shortened stem, forming a club shaped structure called a strobilus. The pine cone and the flower are elaborate variations on these primitive strobili.

There are four divisions of non-seed tracheophytes, vascular plants that reproduce by means of spores , the Psilophyta, Lycophyta, Sphenophyta, and Pterophyta.

Before these non-seed tracheophytes evolved, the bryophytes were the dominant form of plant life. The evolutionary edge of having a more efficient conducting system, and a well-developed root-shoot system enabled them to outcompete bryophytes.

There are only two living genera of whisk ferns, sole survivors of a large and widespread group of early land plants. In addition to the living Division Psilophyta, the psilopsids, there are two extinct divisions of primeval vascular plants. The primitive whisk ferns resemble these extinct pioneers in many ways.

They are the only living vascular plants that lack a root-shoot system, a characteristic they share with both extinct Divisions of ancestral vascular plants. Some recent molecular evidence suggests that one, or even both, of the living genera of psilopsids may actually be more closely related to ferns, like a fern that has reverted to more primitive traits. If this is true, then Psilophyta will join the ranks of the numerous extinct Divisions of plants. Psilopsids are found in tropical and subtropical areas, and occurs throughout the southern US.

I once found one growing on my back porch under the leaves of a spider plant. Whisk ferns are a common weed in greenhouses all over the world. They are simple green upright stems, with dichotomous branching. They have no leaves, and no true roots. The outer tissues of the stem do all the photosynthesizing. A portion of the stem called a rhizome runs along the ground, or just below it. A rhizome is a horizontal stem that spreads the plant around.

Roots grow out the bottom of the rhizome, and a new plant can arise at the same point from the top. The green stem-like plant is the diploid sporophyte, the dominant stage in the life cycle. In the small sporangia bright yellow that form along the upper stems, the spore mother cell forms haploid spores by meiosis.

Their gametophytes are tiny little thread-like underground plants that lack chlorophyll, and live as heterotrophs in the soil, looking and acting much like a tiny fungi. It actually contains a symbiotic fungi, the same mycorrhizae that live in the rhizomes of the adult sporophyte. Division Lycophyta - 1, sp. Their are only five living genera of lycopsids, but at one time from the distant Devonian, about mya, well into the Carboniferous, they were the dominant form of vegetation on the face of the Earth.

Now they are reduced to a shadow of their glorious past, inconspicuous little plants in the forest understory. The tropical species are small epiphytes plants that grow on other plants.

Their roots grow from special underground stems called rhizomes, as do most of these primitive tracheophytes. In some species the sporophylls are mixed in with the scale-like leaves. The sperm swim down the strobilus to the archegonia, and the zygote that forms is retained in the cone, which ripens and falls to the ground. The gametophytes are independent and free-living, They are curious creatures that look and act nothing like their sporophyte parents.

They can be either heterotrophic or autotrophic, and usually have a symbiotic fungi associated with them. Many of the lycopsids are heterosporous. Selaginella is a good example of a heterosporous plant. Division Sphenophyta - 15 sp. In waste places, disturbed areas like trails and railroad beds, and in odd corners of fields and forests you might find another small plant quietly dreaming of its former splendor, the horsetail.

Horsetails appeared in the late Devonian, and were among the dominant forest trees for hundreds of millions of years. Only one genus of Sphenophyta still exists, the genus Equisetum , and it may be the oldest living genus of plants on earth.

Horsetails towered among the Carboniferous forests, reaching heights of feet. Much of the coal deposits we exploit for fuel today were formed from horsetails and other trees during the Carboniferous, toward the end of the Paleozoic.

Horsetails have true roots, stems, and leaves, though the leaves are little more than flattened stems. Their hollow, ribbed stems are jointed, kind of like a stalk of bamboo, and a whorl of leaves arises at each joint. The plants are spread vegetatively by rhizomes. The stems feel very rough, because the epidermal tissues are impregnated with tiny grains of silica sand. This probably helps protect the plant against herbivores. The green plant we see is the diploid sporophyte generation.

The stalks can be highly branched vegetative stalks, which actually look like horse tails, or straight unbranched reproductive stalks, which are tipped with a large strobilus containing the sporangia. The homosporous spores develop into a teeny-tiny green gametophyte, just a few mm long, that looks like the gametophyte of a fern. The gametophyte is haploid, free-living, and autotrophic.

Ferns probably evolved from the psilopsids, sometime in the Devonian, relatively early on in land plant evolution. They are very abundant and diverse, ranging in size from a single centimeter to trees 24 meters tall with 5 meter fronds.

Ferns are relatively advanced plants, with true roots, stems and leaves. The blade of the fern is called a frond, and the little individual leaflets are called pinnae. Ferns have true leaves, what botanists call macrophylls. While the leaves of more primitive plants, which are called microphylls, are simply extensions of the epidermis of the stem, the leaves of ferns and higher plants were formed as a web of tissue stretched between small terminal branches.

The leaves of higher plants, as well as the modified leaves that make up the pine cone and the flower. The life cycle of the fern is typical of other non-seed vascular plants. The leafy green plant is the sporophyte.

Fertile fronds develops clusters of small sporangia on the underside of the frond. These clusters of sporangia are called sori sing. Sori are often protected by a tiny umbrella-like cap called an indusium -ia. Ferns are mostly homosporous, though some are heterosporous. The heterosporous state is a more advanced condition, that seems to have evolved independently in several groups of plants.

The haploid spores are formed by meiosis inside the sporangium. They are ejected in a miniature explosion caused by the unequal drying of the alternate thick and thin-walled cells that line the outer surface. The top pulls slowly back until it reaches a critical point and then snaps forward at an incredible speed.

At that size scale, the expulsion of fern spores is one of the most explosive events in nature. These rhizoids are mainly used to anchor them to whatever is underneath — rock, bark, soil etc.

These are not used to burrow into the ground to search for water or nutrients. They are for stability — and grip. Instead mosses absorb water and nutrients through their bodies. Their stems are made up of very simple structures that are often a single cell thick. This is where the moss absorbs water. So, in summary, in order to grow, moss needs water , and it absorbs that water through its body.

To fertilise the egg in the female stem, the sperm from the male stem needs to travel from the tip of its stem to the tip of the female stem. These little swimmers are either splashed on to female stems or simply swim across as the water sits on the plant.

So water is essential for sexual reproduction for our friends the moss plants. The fastest swimmer arrives, rain soaked and happy — ready to grow new little moss spores to send out into the world!

Even this method requires some moisture to enable the clone plant to break off and, of course, to grow in its new spot. As I mentioned above, moss has a unique structure, and this structure means it can go through a period of drying out or desiccation. It can go through prolonged periods of drought without dying. Apparently 19 years has been recorded in some varieties! Moss can actually dry almost completely out, turning brown in color.