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 deriving 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-flowers." 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 \vhich under some 

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

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

 These become 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- 



