i^o Minnesota Plant Life. 



bark-mosses which attach themselves to the bark of trees, es- 

 pecially near the base of the trunk. In this series, too, occurs 

 a kind of moss remarkable for stationing itself upon the excre- 

 ment of animals and derivino- part of its nourishment from or- 

 ganic substances. There are no mosses which are parasites 

 upon other plants, or which absorb their food-materials ready- 

 made, as do the fungi ; but the dung-moss seems to be develop- 

 ing in that direction and its descendants within the next few 

 hundred years may find themselves within the category of de- 

 pendent plants. 



Turf-mosses, rose-mosses and cup-mosses. Another group 

 of mosses which belongs to the first series may be termed the 

 turf-mosses from their prevalence in damp lawns, especially near 

 the foundation of houses and around verandas. They evidently 

 select regions a little more moist than the lawn-grass prefers. 

 When they fruit they form somewhat pear-shaped capsules with 

 large central columns of sterile tissue. Here, too, are the rose- 

 mosses which produce what are called, for lack of a better term, 

 "moss-fiowers." Mosses of this sort growing in clusters in 

 some shaded ravine or upon moist logs in the forest resemble 

 clusters of little green roses a quarter of an inch or so in diam- 

 eter. At the end of each short erect stem a rose-like cluster of 

 leaves is produced and at the centre of each cluster the egg- 

 organs or spermaries are developed in little clumps. Related 

 to them are the small stolon-bearing mosses which under some 

 conditions are erect-bodied plants, but when about to propagate 

 have the power of pushing out prostrate, runner-like, leafy stems. 

 These ])ecome rooted at the tips and thus enable the plant to 

 widen its circle of growth. 



Among the mosses of this general series there are some forms 

 which produce gemmae a very little after the fashion of the 

 umbrella-liverwort. In one variety, which may be called the 

 gemma-cup-moss, cup-shaped groups of leaves at the end of a 

 stem inclose a growth of tiny stalked gemmae. When the 

 gemmae fall off they send forth alga-like threads of the first- 

 stage and upon these threads buds may develop carrying the 

 plant over into its second-stage. In other kinds the gemmae are 

 produced upon the leaves, forming little clusters generally to- 

 ward the tip of the leaf that bears them. In mosses, the gem- 



