Minnesota Plant Life. 



147 



Fruiting habits of peat-mosses. Peat-mosses are in such a 

 favorable position for simple propagation by the development 

 of branches which become separated from each other upon the 

 death of the older portion of the stem, that they rarely fruit at 

 all. Sometimes, however, whole bogs 

 will be found in fruit at one time. 

 The fruit-body is a little egg-shaped 

 black capsule with bulbous base, the 

 whole shaped somewhat like a dumb-bell 

 with one end larger than the other and 

 a short neck between. The smaller end 

 of the dumb-bell is imbedded in the 

 enlarged cushion-like tip of a slender, 

 erect leafless branch of the vegetative 

 plant. Around the bottom of the cap- 

 sule may be found a thin broken mem- 

 brane which is a relic of the wall of the 

 egg-organ in which the capsule began its 

 existence. Peat-moss capsules open by 

 little circular lids which, when the cap- 

 sule is ripe, separate from the bowl-part, 

 allowing the spores to escape. It will 

 be observed that for the elevation of the 

 spores the same general contrivance is 

 adopted by peat-mosses that appeared 

 earlier in the umbrella-liverworts and 

 their allies. The slender stem which lifts 

 the capsule into the air is not a portion 

 of the capsular plant as in the "scale- 

 moss" liverworts and the other mosses; 

 but, as in the umbrella-liverwort, it is a 

 portion of the vegetative plant special- 

 ized for the purpose of elevating the cap- 

 sule. When peat-moss spores germinate 



they develop under ordinary conditions a flat plate-like first- 

 stage, but rarely this first-stage arises as a branching filament. 

 The first-stage usually persists for weeks or even months, sel- 

 dom, however, becoming very large and in no case exceeding 

 an eighth of an inch or so in length. Upon the first-stage, buds 

 form which mature into the ordinary peat-moss plants upon 



ded at the tips of short ieaf- 



less erect branches. After 



Atkinson. 



