Hi, folks,
I've started a new topic here about the common name that the Professor picked for the moss that can be found in many places in Singapore. The Prof chose "Singapore Moss" for 2 main reasons. The first reason is obvious, the Moss is native to Singapore. The second reason is that it's a moss first popularised by Singaporean hobbyists. Many of you already know these 2 reasons but there's a 3rd one which you may not know.
After many sessions with the Professor, I've learnt many things, one of which is that identification of moss species isn't an exact science. In certain instances, what is one species could very well be another. Or what were thought to be 2 species could very well be the same.
To identify the mosses, the Prof looks at the cells under a microscope. But that's the easy part. The tough part is to find the publication which first announced the species. In other words, the Prof has to refer to the original publication where the Moss was first studied and classified. The Prof has many such books, some of which were published in the 18th century. I was quite surprised to find, when flipping through these books, the clarity of the diagrams and the attention paid to detail. For every moss species, there were many diagrams. Most diagrams showed the leaf struture and some showed the cell structures. A few showed the fronds.
For the Singapore Moss, the diagrams of the leaf structures were of a wide range. There were short and broad leaves as well as long and narrow ones. In other words, the Singapore Moss is pretty special, in the sense that their leaf structures are very diverse. They could be long and narrow or broad and short.
That, my friends, is the 3rd reason. We are known as a multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-culture nation. The Singapore Moss name is very apt as just like us, the moss is mutli-faceted too.
Loh K L
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