How many terrestrial mosses will grow submersed?

[CO2]

I was at my parents house in Northern California this weekend for Xmas and found a couple different mosses growing there. One looks very similar to this picture I found in the "Mosses and the men who love them - Part VI" thread:



It was growing on a lot of trees and rocks there.

Another has fronds that look like Xmas Moss in places where it is really wet.

The third moss is very "matted" or compact and was found emersed and submersed due to the recent rainy weather.

I took samples of all three mosses and I am going to try growing them submersed. My question is... what are the chances that mosses that are found non-submersed will grow submersed? I am guessing that a lot of people on this forum have tried before. I tried to search past threads for this info but didn't find the answer, I am new to this forum so I apologize if I missed it. By the way, thanks for such a great forum!

[timebomb]

That's a difficult question to answer, Craig. Usually, chances are not high but if you found the mosses in wet places, chances of them surviving underwater would be pretty good. But then again, the moss could be semi-aquatic, in the sense that although it can survive for a while underwater, it needs to be occasionally above water to complete its life cycle.

Just by physical appearances alone, mosses can look very similar to one another, especially when one is inexperienced in detecting the small differences. So although what you found may look like what is shown in the picture, it could very well be a different moss altogether, possibly even belonging to a different genus.

So far, we know that all the Vesicularia's and Taxiphyllum's can be grown submersed although they are not true aquatic mosses. According to the professor, among all the aquarium mosses we have seen so far, only the Willow Moss (Fontinalis antipyretica) is a true aquatic moss. But whether truly aquatic or not, what hobbyists like us want is to have beautiful mosses in our tanks so there's no harm trying.

Let us know how the 3 mosses turn out in your tanks. It will be great if you can show us some pictures.

Loh K L

[Scott_sg]

At the risk of horrifying everyone here, we were always taught and all the textbooks always said mosses were terrestrial but needed water for sexual reproduction, normally rain drops or dew.
Even java moss I never really thought about and just figured it was not a true moss.
Does that mean all the mosses in aquariums are clones? Since I assume they are only reproducing asexually.
I suppose all those nice "natural" aquariums and the expensive books should be called "unnatural" aquariums since the mosses would normally occur above the water
Has anyone seen or had sexual reproduction (of mosses) in their aquariums?

Scott.

[timebomb]

Scott,

The Vesicularia's, namely Christmas, Singapore and Erect Mosses are known to throw out sporophytes when grown submersed in our tanks. But whether do the spores germinate and grow into new mosses in our tanks is still somewhat of a mystery. If you ask me, I suspect the spores have to be spread by the wind through air before they can grow into mosses.

For some strange reason, no one has ever reported seeing sporophytes in the Taxiphyllum's, namely Java, Taiwan and Spiky. I once had a specimen of Java Moss from the US of A which had sporophytes but the professor said it isn't the same as the Java Moss in our region. The professor has seen Java Moss with sporophytes but the specimen was from Vietnam. Even before he met us, he and his colleagues have tried many experiments to make Java Moss throw out sporophytes but none were successful. The sex organs, both male and female are there but the female organ aborts itself whenever it's fertilised.

As you said, mosses reproduce sexually so it's still a great mystery why the Taxiphyllum's do not grow sporophytes.

As for natural aquariums, I think you mean "nature aquariums", don't you? Takashi Amano was the first person to popularise the concept of "nature aquariums". By that, I don't think he meant imitating nature down to the smallest detail but rather, to build an aquarium to showcase the beauty of nature. To use an analogy - to entertain an audience, a mimic exaggerates the behaviour and mannerisms of the person he mimicks. He does not just imitate. Amano does not imitate too. He exaggerates the beauty of nature. I can't say we should fault him for that.

Loh K L

[Scott_sg]

KL, that is interesting. As you know I am not into mosses but I still find the biology of all these things interesting. Even though I was teasing about the natural aquariums and still got it wrong I do have a great deal of respect for all the plant people. I had to take a course in it once and I still think Botany was one of the toughest I had to do. And not just me, even the people who did very well in other subjects were struggling to get through that. So it is all interesting but personally I think it is a difficult field.
Perhaps in future when you have more time you could use the above as the basis of another paper. Even for a non moss person it is interesting stuff.

Scott.

[CO2]

Thank you for the reply Loh. I will take some pictures tonight.

[timebomb]

Perhaps in future when you have more time you could use the above as the basis of another paper. Even for a non moss person it is interesting stuff.

It's definitely very interesting why the Taxiphyllum's are not producing sporophytes but I'm in no position to come up with a paper on this, Scott. I'll see if I can persuade the professor to do a study on this but he's a very busy man. He's now working on a book which will describe all the mosses that are native to Singapore but it will be October next year before it's published.

In the meantime, the professor is more interested in identifying the few aquarium mosses in circulation that haven't been positively identified yet. He believes the only way to do this with certainty is to go into DNA profiling. It's going to take a whole team of people, lots of money and work just to build up a database of the DNA of the various aquarium mosses. The professor is willing but the project may never take off. He's looking for student volunteers but in "Singapore Inc" where people are pragmatic and mercenary, it's hard to find such students. I've often said, the fact that we have a professor in our university who's an expert in bryophytes is because he's a Filipino by birth and an American by nationality. No "Singapore born and raised" professor in his right mind would spend his whole life studying mosses. There's just no money in it.

Loh K L

[CO2]

Ok, it took me a couple days, but I finally got pictures. Now that I see the two in pictures, I don't think there is a similarity to the Italian moss. Also, what I thought was two mosses, an xmas shaped and "stringy" appear to the same moss.



A rock of the "trees" that went into my moss tank:



Some close ups:





I only put a little bit into my tanks and the rest in my front yard with the native mosses. Hopefully it lives underwater, I'll update this thread with the results.

The third moss I was talking about that is all matted, was hard to get pictures of. If it grows submersed I will take pictures.