Living Things: Mosses and Ferns Modern Impacts of Primitive Plants

In this episode of Wildly Curious (formerly For the Love of Nature), co-hosts Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole explore the fascinating world of mosses and ferns. While often considered primitive, these seedless plants are anything but boring. From the mosses' incredible water-retention abilities to the ferns' prehistoric origins, learn how these plants have evolved over millions of years to survive in a variety of ecosystems. Katy and Laura break down the differences between mosses and ferns, dive into their role in the environment, and share some surprising facts about how these "simple" plants play a crucial part in the world around us.

Perfect for nature enthusiasts and anyone curious about the often-overlooked plants that shape our ecosystems. Tune in to discover the ancient secrets of mosses and ferns!

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to For the Love of Nature, a podcast where we tell you everything you need to know about nature and probably more than you wanted to know. I'm Laura.
And I'm Katy, and today is another taxonomy one. I promise, as always, it'll be way more fun than what it sounds like, so.
Some people immediately just turned this episode off.
Yeah, just like skip. I mean, like, no, listen, stay and listen. We're talking about science, and it's gonna be cool, damn it.
So, we're gonna be talking about that, although they're considered primitive plants, mosses and ferns are anything but boring.
I do love me some mosses and ferns. I definitely have said on this podcast before that I belong to a moss appreciation society on Facebook.
You do, yeah. Like, and that's, yeah, she's not just, that's not like a, like, figuratively, no, she literally is saying she is a part of a group.
I just look at pictures of moss covering things, and it brings me joy.
I mean, at least it's, nevermind. At least it's just joy.
Yeah. So, yeah, we're gonna talk about taxonomy. So just quick refresher for any new listeners who just decided to randomly listen to our Muscles and Ferns episode.
All life can be categorized into eight levels, each getting more and more specific. Domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. Basically, taxonomy is complicated, and it's always changing.
So there is no cut and dry definition for what we're kind of going to talk about today. So we're going to dive into the plant kingdom, okay?
Not let it be dry.
Yeah, and try not to let it be dry, which is funny because it says there is, literally when I was looking up, that there is no cut and dry definition for the plant kingdom.
Of course not. Of course not, though, because it has to be complicated. It has to be complicated.
And also at the very highest level, you might think you know what a plant is, but actually there's no such thing as a plant. There's no such thing as a plant. There's no cut and dry definition of what a plant is, because most have chlorophyll and other pigments, but not all of them.
Most can photosynthesize, but not all of them. They can't move, although some of them have reproductive cells that can.
I was like, don't tell me we all of a sudden found a walking plant. I was like, I'll lose my stuff. What are the trees in Lord of the Rings that can move?
Ah, the Ents, yeah. That might be a little much, although there's that thing called the walking tree and the tropics. I know there was one in Costa Rica, but I can't really walk.
It doesn't get up and go for it.
Or even over time, it doesn't.
Go for an evening stroll, sunset walk.
At least we don't think so.
Yeah. But if we go all the way back to the very first tree episode that we talked about, I am telling you, we're saying right now that trees, there's no cut and dry definition within at least mine or my son's lifetime. They're going to reclassify plants as being way more alive than what we think they are.
Yeah, that's still to this day. That's my mother-in-law's favorite episode. I was like, yeah, I was having an existential crisis during it.
Everything we know is not true.
But yeah, two last things that kind of make plants plants, but not all of them have a cell wall composed of cellulose and don't need protein because they can get nitrogen in other ways. So anyway, we're going to dive into the plant kingdom, and we're actually going to cover like several different phyla, which is the second one, second level. But because botanists have to be complicated, they don't always call them phyla, they call them divisions.
Like why, why, why, why make it so difficult? Like just keep it the same folks, keep it the same.
As Katy knows, I was having like a taxonomy crisis No, you were. researching this episode.
Because it is so complicated.
Well, I was like, okay, are they this, are they this, are they this? So in the past, what we're going to talk about, muscles and ferns, they used to be lumped into two groups.
The bryophytes.
Just two. The bryophytes and the turitophytes. Now, DNA studies and lots of discussions by taxonomists.
They consider them now seven phyla.
But still people, still some people adamantly hold on to two. Yeah, that's just two.
You got your lumpers and your splitters. It's always what it is. But anyway, both are considered primitive plants.
So what Katy mentioned in the beginning, as they originated millions of years ago, and they can be lumped together as seedless plants. So that's what Katy and I just were like, all right, it's fine. They don't have to be two things.
Seedless plants, that's what we're covering.
Because it has to be complicated.
But I do love these because I did like discovering, like they're just so ancient. Like we're talking about first plants. Besides algae, first terrestrial plants.
Which is awesome because like, okay, I will say, being from Western Pennsylvania, I grew up in land of the ferns. Like ferns everywhere. We don't have ferns in Texas.
I mean, I'm sure we do. Not where you are. Yeah, it's not like the forest.
It's rotten the woods and it's a carpet.
Carpet of ferns. Yeah, I do miss that. I really do miss that because that is so amazing.
You just want to lay down and feel like asleep. Woodland nymph.
Or it's like my fear is a kid. Not a fear. It's the same weird feeling of like you're in the woods, middle of nowhere, but you feel like you're being watched.
Same thing. I'd be like in the middle of a big fern forest like that. Huge trees and then again, carpet of ferns.
I'm like, there could be like tiny gnomes running through here and no one would ever know. Like no one would know.
I almost want to say likely.
We'll just throw that under our Bigfoot, our crypto episode and the gnomes.
Just throw it in there.
Running through the ferns.
I love how we're talking about taxonomy, and then Laura says something crazy like, there are probably gnomes. We've just lost all scientific credibility.
There might just be. Listen, people still listen to us after I walked barefoot in my yard for a month and reported back on it to see if I was grounded. And then try to convince people that trees were alive.
And still we have people that listen to us. So I mean, we are trained scientists, believe it or not. We are credible.
All right, mazes and ferns. I do really like ferns. A fern is actually one of the tattoos I've almost gotten several times.
Yeah, they're so beautiful.
They are.
And I, seriously, whenever I see a good patch of nice soft moss, I just wish I were the size of a chipmunk and I could just lay down and nestle in. Yeah, it just looks so comfy, and it's kind of mysterious the way its little stalks come up. There's something, it's like something magical about it.
It's like a tiny world. I think I touch on that a little bit. These are like micro habitats that they have.
But it is really neat, and I think it's more fascinating than what... Again, I feel the same about moss and the way I do with lichen.
Yes.
You know what I mean?
It's an odd thing that most people don't really take the time to notice or appreciate, but when you do, it's so perfect and small.
Yeah, so insane. Not as much as I love canopy, bird's nest, and stuff. Right, your ryeified stuff.
Which I'm kind of going to mention.
Listen, I love me a good bird's nest fur in here.
So well, since evolution wise, we start with Mosses came first. Why don't you start?
The mosses that came first. All right, so even though they're in the seven different groups now, mosses originally were said, like Laura said earlier, were originally grouped within the bryophytes, which includes the liverworts and the hornworts as well. And I'm not going to be talking about those.
I'm just going to focus on mosses.
I don't really know anything about hornworts, do I? I don't know. I've seen some once or twice, but not very often.
Maybe it's one of those things that I just need to research more, and I find it fascinating, but I just don't.
But I just don't.
I just don't.
They're close to moss. That's why they're grouped together.
Yeah, all close enough. But anyway, so bryophytes are among the simplest of terrestrial plants, and the word bryophyte means like bryan meaning tree moss and phyton meaning plant.
So the name bryan just means moss?
Bryon, B-R-Y-O-N.
But do you think that's where the name bryon came from?
Just moss man.
Moss man, oh my gosh, if I knew any bryons.
We do, the last supervisor we had at the zoo. I'll shoot him a text, which is funny because I always called him boss man. And so boss man, moss man.
So I'll just sneak it in there in a text, and I'll be like, TITLE.
The listeners are giving serious eye roll right now.
And I'll just randomly call moss man.
Apparently Brian means strong or virtuous, so lame.
I mean, moss is pretty strong. Is it?
Or virtuous? Is it virtuous game?
I don't cover that in this episode. But yeah, so tree moss plant. But so anyway, like Laura said earlier, moss are among the earliest plants that had started to adapt to live on dry land.
And it did evolve from algae. Yes. I don't know though.
I didn't see like moss fossils.
Dude, don't even, obviously, I was going to say do not look up the evolutionary family of tree.
Oh, heck no.
Because I made that mistake, and that's where I started spiraling.
Don't make the same mistake Laura did, folks. Don't Google.
Don't Google the tree.
I mean, they do have a lot of fossils. It doesn't. I mean, if you Google moss fossils.
Are there? Yeah, no, there are. There must be.
I swear, like if I found a moss, I wouldn't have no idea.
I'd be like, oh, that's a pattern. That's weird on a rock, huh? So anyway, all right.
So moss are typically small in size, but they are one of the largest groups of land plants and can be found pretty much throughout the entire world in almost all different habitats.
Yeah, isn't there even like, is it in Antarctica? I feel like it might be.
Yeah, and like the warmer parts and stuff. Because I wasn't like in Antarctica, too. I'm pretty sure.
Yes, definitely. I was like in there.
So mosses, they are non flowering, which produce, like we said, spores, because they're seedless. And they have stems and leaves, but don't have true roots. And it goes back to seeing those fossils, because they're dated back to about 450 million years ago.
Wowzer.
Which is nuts, because it's not like, well, and not only that, but it's not like they've just found them in one area. Like they found them in a variety of different habitats.
Right, so it must have been like a co-version, possibly.
Yeah, like they've survived so much in a different variety of climates, and they've still stuck around. So they are pretty hardy species. They're comprised of about 15,000 to 25,000 species, give or take.
Right now, like, current.
Currently, currently.
Because I'm sure tons of them went extinct, like when it comes to ferns, like so many are gone.
Yeah, which is so sad.
So you can only imagine how many over time there's been.
Just dwindle. Yeah. But they occur on every continent.
I guess I should just listen to my own self. In every continent and every ecosystem that has enough sunlight. So as long as it has sunlight, moss is going to be there.
And then just in general, in the world of plants, bryophytes, they are the second most diverse group, exceeded only by angiosperms, which are, of course, the flowering plants. So moss are very diverse, but obviously if you're going to be found on every single continent, in a variety of habitats, you're going to have to be, obviously, pretty diverse. So like I said before, they're flowerless plants that don't have a true vascular system, and therefore they're unable to draw water and nutrients up from the ground over a long distance.
Gotcha. So that's why they're so short.
Which is why they stay small. If they don't have a vascular system, it's got to be all what?
All osmosis.
Close. Yeah, it has to be super close. And so this is one of the biggest reasons why they are distinguished separately from ferns, is that because ferns and flowering plants, they do have that vascular system, moths just don't have it.
Yeah.
I just imagine the little, for anyone who doesn't remember their basic science stuff with osmosis, that's just water molecules inherently cling to one another, so they can travel up against gravity if they cling on to each other. Water can get up a little bit by itself, up that moss plant.
And they do have rhizoids, which is like fine brown filaments that kind of look like roots, that anchor them to the ground, but they just literally are there to anchor them to the ground.
Gotcha. No tubes.
Yeah. They don't pull up water at all. And so if you ever ripped up moss from something, you'll feel like it's ripping up.
Yes. Yeah, like Velcro.
Yeah. No, it does feel like Velcro. I don't recommend people going on and ripping moss, but it does feel like Velcro.
But those aren't roots. Those are the rhizoids. It's simply there to anchor it.
So they absorb the water and nutrients mainly through their leaves, which are teeny tiny, which are usually only a single cell in thickness, which I did not know that most of the time.
It's actually a pretty big cell.
Yeah, it's a pretty big... Well, I mean, it's a lot of cells in a layer. You know what I mean?
Like a bunch from a layer. So again, they don't have flowers or fruit. Instead, the seeds, they have spores.
So they also collect it on the leaves, but then they can also draw the moisture and minerals that they need and everything from rain and water around them because their surface is so absorbent. So it's not only just the leaves. Depending on the moss species, they function like sponges, which is also why they're so squishy.
Yeah, so squishy. Why Laura, would you say a chipmunk or a squirrel? Or either one.
Either one.
I could be a squirrel too. It's fine, guys. So they are like sponges.
They just soak up all the water using their capillary spaces, and it just sucks up and it holds on.
So they're all sharing water.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, typically it's like one plant. You know what I mean?
It's like one moss.
Right. Like is it one plant, or is it lots and lots of plants that all grow together?
I thought it was one.
I have no idea. Like DNA-wise, like is a patch of moss one plant, or is a patch of moss lots of tiny individuals?
So mosses typically form dense green clumps or mats, often in damp or shady locations. The individual plants are usually composed of simple leaves that are generally only one cell thick attached to a stem that may be branched or unbranched and has only a limited role in conducting water and nutrients.
So I think it's a whole bunch of plants, but they act as a unit.
They act as a unit. But does that technically... Again, though, this goes back to what is the definition of a plant.
Right.
You know what I mean? Because they are attached.
They act as one. Well, it's kind of like a... What's that?
Is it the man of war? That's like a whole bunch of little things all together?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I guess it could be kind of like that, where it's like one animal, but it's not one animal. It's a whole bunch of little animals.
Yeah, I don't know. But I don't think it's... I don't think...
Because it's not technically separated like that, per se. I mean, it's separate entities, but I feel like that would be like pulling a branch off of a tree. You know what I mean?
Like it's still part of the greater whole.
But it couldn't live on its own, right? I feel like if you pluck... Like I just bought some Stag and Moss for some aquatic tanks, and I feel like I could pluck one and it would be okay.
You probably could.
But I bet if you asked the Moss, they would talk about themselves as a collective.
I'm sure they would. We are all one.
Right. Like it would definitely be like that. Yeah, because like mosses are actually very cultish.
Don't join a cult. Don't join the Moss. Like, I mean, it would have to be.
I mean, they're all obviously sharing water and nutrients.
Yeah.
It just has to be that way.
So it has to be.
So they're functioning like a one, but they are many. We are one, but we are many.
It just has a t-shirt, just a big clump of moss on his shirt.
No one would get it. It would be so funny, though.
Oh, my goodness. Anyway, yeah, so it is individuals, but they have to be one, because I don't think it could survive just one by itself.
I like it.
Just one by itself. Anyway.
Probably every once in a while, you get a pioneering moss.
Just one little one.
That starts a new patch. I can do it. Because obviously, it has to branch out.
No pun intended.
At some point.
Oh, man.
All right. So, mosses, they do play a vital role in development of new ecosystems, which I did not know this. Typically, mosses are among the first plants that would come back on to disturb with lichens, I guess.
Yeah.
They and lichen must be friends.
The troublemakers are like, let's do this. Any area that's deforested or affected by forest fires, they stabilize the soil, surface, and retain the water, helping the new plants to grow, which again, they're sponges.
Way to go, moss.
Right? Helping everyone out. Also, I found out that moss, I mean, this makes sense.
I guess I just never thought about it, but moss can impact the temperature of the soil, both warming it up and cooling it down, depending on the environment that it needs, and what everybody else needs around it. So if you remember, right? If you remember, like rhizoids, they play a vital role in being able to bring stuff back and forth to trees and everything, and like the underground system, or part of the underground system.
And moss are sort of this, like Laura said, it's almost like a blanket. And again, it's one of those things that like without, without the trees and the microchorizoids, like under there with the rhizoids, without all of this stuff layered on top of each other, like you don't have a healthy force. So it's like you need all these pieces.
Yeah, you need all these pieces and parts, and without one, something is going to suffer.
Well, right? I mean, you just got to take a look at a tree, and you're always going to see moss.
There's a reason for it.
Right.
Insulate. I mean, who doesn't want to be under a little blanket?
Moss.
Oh, tree roots under blankets.
Right? I mean, that's a cute picture.
It is.
Little baby trees nestled amongst some moss.
Because, I mean, you figure too, even in like hot places, moss would protect like the tree roots. I mean, typically-
Yeah, and be holding water.
Yeah. It's like a perfect situation. So it doesn't dry out.
It doesn't get all dry. So we need mosses within forests because they help so much with the temperature control. Like it keeps it-
If the forest floor needs to stay moist and it needs to stay cool, boom, on it. You need to protect it from the sun. Moss is like, gotcha.
So it is interesting. But in the Arctic, they actually have the opposite effect on temperature, which they can prevent the warmth of the sun from reaching the ground to reduce the speed at which the ice thaws.
It needs some of that.
Yeah, so it's like wherever it is, the moss knows what it needs to do, which is crazy. Because yes, it's slowing down the ice thawing, which keeps everything else alive around it, which everything connects. But that's specifically the little niche that it holds within the forest.
Yeah. I got this. Which is crazy.
It knows what its little job is, and it's just like, on it. I got this. You need the ice to stop thawing?
On it. You need warmer tree roots? On it.
You need to stop it from the sun? Got it. It just knows what it needs to do.
So obviously, there are important components of any vegetation and region in the world, and pretty much, like I said before, any forest, wetland, mountains, you can find them absolutely anywhere.
So you've got your mosses, and then you've got your fern and fern allies, which I love that term, but that's literally what they're called, fern allies. But you can lump them together. In the old group, they were called Turidophytes, and people still usually, even though it's not an official grouping anymore, they still talk about them as the group.
So the primary characteristics...
Those rebel plant people. I'm not going to change.
The Turidophytes are primitive, just like mosses, in that they produce spores instead of seeds. And that really goes into the life cycle stuff. So I'll mention a few things, and then I'm sure Katy will talk about it more.
But spores are not like seeds. They're similar. They're like the precursors to seeds.
So instead of being like... They're only one cell. Single celled.
And they're spread via wind and water. And all plants have what's called alternating generations, but it is very, very apparent in mosses and ferns. And alternating generations just means that all plants, at some point in their life cycle, go from having one set of chromosomes to two, just like people.
Yeah. But it's the same with plants. And so most plants, it's very brief, but ferns and mosses are a little more complicated in that they stay single-celled for much longer.
So anywho, besides having the spores, like the mosses, what makes them different than moss is the fact that they are vascular. And vascular just means that they have tubes and such that can help them to carry water. The word for vascular plants is tracheophyte, which I thought was cool.
Like your trachea, like a tube.
I mean, it makes sense.
But because I guess botanists are elitists, these are considered lower vascular plants rather than just vascular plants.
Lower vascular plants?
Lower vascular, because they're more primitive.
She's just down talking the ferns.
Down talking the ferns. They were here first.
You're so funny, and they were here first. Their vascular system allows for the transportation of water and nutrients throughout all the tissues of the fern or other plants. Roots suck up water.
Xylem transports water, which I actually saw a truck today drive by, and the company name was Xylem, and it was a water company.
Oh, interesting.
I'm going to talk about that tonight. So Xylem carries water, and phloem carries nutrients and sugars. I feel like there's got...
The only thing I ever think about with phloem is phlegm.
I know, me too.
Phlegm is thick, it can be sugary. Like it's phloem carries the sugar.
That's so gross.
I don't know how else to remember it. But being vascular gives plants a little bit of extra oomph and allows them to be better terrestrial plants than mosses because unlike having to just rely on osmosis, they can carry water, which lets them get taller. And being taller and being able to live in environments that aren't as wet, like mosses need to be places where it's pretty wet.
Someplace, yeah.
Ferns still rely on water somewhat, and as Katy might mention in life cycles, they rely on water for part of their life cycle.
I don't talk all that much about it. I mean, I talk about the life cycle, but I don't go super in depth.
Well, you know, just like frogs and stuff, amphibians rely on water.
It all goes back to frogs with you. For how much you're like, I don't like frogs, it all goes back to frogs.
People are more comfortable with frogs than ferns.
People are more comfortable with frogs than ferns? You know what, ferns make me uncomfortable, and if we don't talk about it.
Actually, okay, fine, it's more like people. In mosses and ferns, rather than having reproductive organs, they have a stage where they're just a single chromosome. People have the same thing.
It's our eggs and our sperm, that's single chromosomes. And just like sperm have a little tail, and they need to travel through liquid, it's the exact same for mosses and ferns. Their spore, when it travels, it has to travel via liquid to fertilize anything, if it's going to reproduce sexually.
So it has to have water at some point in its life cycle. So ferns can get away from the water, but not completely away from the water. So because they can do better on land, it's resulted in their dominance of terrestrial plant life.
So there is a huge range of ferns. Or I should say they've dominated terrestrial plant life even more so than moss, like of the spores. There's more variety of species, apparently, even of ferns than there are of mosses.
I don't know, I feel like you can read very conflicting things because you were just saying that they're the second largest group. So I don't know if it's bryophytes, or if it's the whole group of...
Scientists don't freaking know. Yeah, exactly. It goes back to the Lompers and the Splitters.
It's fine, folks.
So that's the characteristics of a fern, essentially. They're almost identical to mosses except for the vascular thing.
Yeah, which, I mean, makes sense.
It's a big enough difference.
Yeah, a big enough difference. So then the life cycle, I'll touch on it. Are we done?
Yeah, tell people more about the spores and the...
Yeah, because I don't go too in-depth about it. So they have a two-stage life cycle known as the alternation of generations, which I feel like, I don't know, is...
I definitely remember learning this in botany.
Me too, but I also feel like it's some sort of like an announcement. The alternation of generations, you know what I mean? I feel like it's an announcement of some sort.
Anyway, so there's two stages. Gosh, I'm having botany flashbacks, and it's not good.
And it just sounds complicated. And like I had said, all plants go through this. It's just more obvious with the plants and the mosses.
Yeah, yeah. So the first stage is the gametophytes. This is the green part of the moss.
For mosses anyway, this is the green part that we see. And then there's the sporophyte, which is formed as a capsule containing the spores and whatever. So the sporophyte generation produces spores that are capable of germinating and then develop into the gametophyte generation that produces the male and female sex organs and ensure sexual reproduction.
And listeners, Google this.
It literally just comes down to that.
You need to see a picture. Google a picture and it will make so much more sense.
Alternation of generations. Yeah, and it literally is that simple, though. You have the sporophytes, you have the gametophytes, that's it.
Spores, grows, yeah. And so that's pretty much all it does.
Oh, go ahead.
No, no, no, go ahead.
I was going to say, and so the flip-flop of the ferns is that so they also have the gametophyte and the sporophyte, but whereas mosses are mostly the gametophyte, which is the single chromosome stage, ferns are mostly the sporophytes.
Yep, they're opposite of each other.
More like a tree where they spend most of their time as an adult and have double chromosomes.
Laura just air quoted very big for those of you who cannot see. Because you're like very big. You're like, no one can see you.
What's his name, Nixon or whatever?
No one can see you. No one can see you, except for me.
You can.
I appreciate your giant air quotes.
You can hear it in my voice.
Yeah, no, you can. I'll give you credit for that one. But yeah, no, it is completely opposite, which again, then it goes back to, I get why they would have clumped them together.
And I feel like that's one of the things that a scientist or botanist one day is just like, I mean, it's close enough.
Or that's how people who weren't botanists but all the other scientists.
Yeah, well, close enough. That's close enough. And then some picky, just like, no, they're different.
And that's whenever we started to get arguments and division. Because that is, I mean, that's close enough. I would be, that's close enough.
I mean, I get it why they're different, but still.
Yes. But the fact that either of them spends any significant time as a gametophyte is what makes it even more different than the other plants.
Yes, very much so.
The whole gametophyte thing, like the other plants are doing that for a hot second.
Yeah.
Not a substantial amount of time. Either their whole life, like a moss, or at least a chunk of it as a fern. I forgot that the ferns, their little gametophyte is in the shape of a heart.
So I'm going to go into, unless Laura, if you had anything else with life cycle, because I was going to go into moss and the ecosystems.
No, you go for it.
All right, so let's just go back to bryophytes in general. Again, we're lumping for the sake of simplicity here, because it's too complex, some more we get down. So as I said earlier, they do play an important role in regulating ecosystems because they play, you know, like a buffer for all plants that live close by and benefit from water and nutrients that the moss collects.
So again, it's there to help the forest as a whole. It's a collective. Again, everybody helps everybody.
Also, again, you have indicator species, and I know we've talked about these before, indicator species like frogs. Mosses are also a good indicator species because it does tell you about the quality of the habitat that it's in.
That makes sense.
As many plant species are very sensitive to levels of moisture in the atmosphere, which are lower in disturbed habitats because there's less shade there. And so it's not just the fact that, oh, it's in a sunny area because you can have a sunny forest. It's the fact that if you had like no trees, no nothing, or if it was like a poorly, like you think of like a park, like a lot of the parks in the United States, a lot of the urban parks are, again, go back and listen to our tree episode, but it talks about like the...
Like ecologically dead zones.
Yes. Because they are dead zones because like the trees are spaced out, which they shouldn't be. It has like the crappy grass that's like not native, and so it's all like staged and...
Gosh. I've got to go through and cut out all my coughs. But so it doesn't have that moisture.
So like if you think about like your urban parks, just because it is disturbed, I mean, again, you can have a sunny forest, but if it's not disturbed, that whole community is not built the way it's supposed to, it's not going to hold in a lot of that moisture. And so if it holds in that moisture, boom, moss. That's a really good indicator of a healthy forest.
No moss, poor indicator. So they also play a very crucial role because they stabilize the soil and again, help with water retention, which is helps in prevention of floods and even landslides, which I was like, oh, I guess again, never really thought of that.
But that's what we're relying on is moss. That's all it stands between you and a landslide. Tiny moss.
Obviously, folks, there's a lot more that goes into it, but they do play a role in it. They are also very important within the carbon cycle with peat mosses storing a huge amount of carbon in both the arctic and the temperate zones, which again, I'm like, oh yeah, it's like all these pieces connecting. Moss are way more important than people give it credit for.
So the other very important part that they play within an ecosystem is insects and other fungi. They're constantly used within the wildlife, such as squirrels do pull it up for lining their nest, or what's a squirrel nest called? A drey?
Birds will use moss to line their nest because it is like a nice soft cushiony substance.
Oh, for sure a primitive man was doing it.
Right? No, it had to have been ripping up that Velcro moss. And so other ecosystems will, or other animals within the ecosystem, will rely on that.
So because of their range of adaptations that moss have built over the year, they have been able to occupy areas that are otherwise uninhabitable, like on rocky ledges and stuff, as long as it's healthy. And that's the other weird...
And the water.
Yeah, and the water. But I mean, it's still, it's the moisture. It's not so much water, it's moisture, which that is a difference.
Right, because otherwise, how are they surviving in these inhospitable...
Yeah, but it can, because it's the moisture.
It's taken it from the air, too.
So there are different species that have adapted to survive in insanely extreme conditions. And some studies have shown that the lowest temperature that they can photosynthesize in is around negative 15 degrees. Wait, negative 15...
Sorry, Celsius, degrees Celsius. That's still down into the 20s teens.
But I guess if you have no vascular system, that doesn't freeze solid. It wouldn't freeze. So as long as you could still...
As long as the molecules inside of you could still move.
Then yeah, you should be fine. So that's down to 5 degrees Fahrenheit. So negative 15 degrees Celsius, 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
Which I mean, you figure in Pennsylvania, there's moss everywhere. And it definitely gets colder than that. It's just average temperature, I guess.
So in hot environments like prairies or deserts, one way that mosses tolerate that heat is by becoming dormant. I did not know that moss went dormant.
I've seen sphagnum moss bogs, like in bogs where some areas are dry at all.
So obviously, they'll go ahead and they'll dry themselves out. And they can survive heat much better when they're hydrated, of course. But if they're well hydrated, then whenever those really bad heat spells come, they'll dry themselves off.
But some mosses have even been known to survive temperatures as high as 100 degrees Celsius when dried out, which is insanely hot. So I mean, it can... I mean, I don't know, because there's no place on Earth where it gets that hot, except for thermal...
You know what I mean? So because you think about the moisture, they are a good indicator species. There are several threats to moss, which mostly habitat loss and habitat degradation, which is like...
Like pollution.
Yeah, pollution. And anytime you have...
Brain blank here. Erosion, like on the sides of the mountains and stuff that wears along riverbeds and creek beds and things like that, the erosion, certain aspects of modern agriculture, again, same thing, parks, modern urban parks, but the agriculture overgrazing, undergrazing, and the widespread use of herbicides and fertilizers have definitely posed a huge threat to moss arrival, as does clearing trees and things. So basically, again, if you're using a bunch of herbicides and a bunch of fertilizers, unhealthy ecosystem.
Again, moss are going to be like, hold up, not good, this isn't good. So again, as mosses, they don't have roots to get their nutrients directly. They get their nutrients directly from the air and rain rather than soil.
So they are particularly sensitive to atmospheric pollutions.
I know lichens like that too.
Yeah, which is why they have become extinct from urban and industrial environments. So again, it's like you can have, you need the healthy soil in a way.
And not just the soil, but the air quality.
Yeah, it's way more so the air quality than what I ever knew. So it's like, yes, it's the moisture.
I knew lichens were like that, but I didn't know moss was.
Yep, it's the moisture that they need, the moisture to show, you know, indicator of a healthy system. But then if there's like pollutants in the air, pollutants in the soil, even though it doesn't suck it up, I mean, it's still gonna, you know, kill it and stuff.
It's just sitting in it.
Yeah, right, right. But then the air too. And so it's like it really, it's way more of an indicator species than what I ever thought that it was, because it is just really, really sensitive.
Fascinating.
So that's what I have on moss, which yeah, I thought that was the coolest. That was my biggest takeaway from what I was doing. The research is just how big of it.
And that must be one of the differences. Like I learned that lichen takes everything from the air. So it's like a radiation sponge, but lichen survives it, and things will eat it and be full of radiation.
Whereas it sounds like moss will die. They just, yeah, cuts out.
And so they're making an area in the coal mine.
Yeah.
Can't do it.
They have volunteered to be a helper in every niche.
Right? No, it really has. But in a way, though, I mean, okay, so you figure trees.
All right, let's just hear me out on this one. Trees, we already know that they will adapt whenever they see that there's, whenever they sense that there's danger. It's just on tree time.
So it's way slower than what anything else, like what we know, because they're going to out-survive us, outlive us. So moss does help them in the fact that if they start to die out, like trees can react. And I was like looking this up.
This was like a rabbit hole I started to dig down.
It's their canary in a coal mine.
It almost is like their canary.
Literally.
Because then they know and they can start moving resources and stuff. And I'm like, what the fudge? That's crazy.
Yeah.
And so anyway, so there's not, again, just like so much other research, there's not a whole...
Moss are tree minions.
Yeah, there's not a lot of research out there, so people don't go quoting our podcast for your science papers. Because it really isn't just like, there isn't a whole lot of research on like plant systems. Yeah, because that is still fairly new.
But anyway, I thought that that was fascinating. Again, if you take a look at, they really are like, they are helpful. And even though they die off because they see threats, pollutions, everything, that's an indicator to like trees that trees will slowly adapt over time.
So I thought that was fascinating.
Yeah, especially because like, moss came first. So it's not like trees.
They came to scope out the land. I mean, moss are older. They're just wiser.
Scoped out the land, knows what it's doing.
They're like, listen, we figured this out.
Yeah, a long time ago.
Never figured out the water thing.
We haven't grown roots, but I mean, you figure if they did have roots, though, they would probably have been extinct a long, like a while ago. And because you figured they suck up everything, and they are so tiny that any sort of pollutant, boom, gone.
It's blowing my mind. The implications are more and more. The more I'm thinking about it, the more I'm like, oh, my gosh, like what if like moss is like livestock for trees?
Or like, you know, like all the, like how much? Anyway, okay, before we get to Laura's going to have another crisis here. Crisis.
And I got a paper to write.
I can't have a crisis before she writes a paper.
Okay, so real quick, more fern stuff. So there are 12,000 species of ferns right now. And that's current today for not all the extinct species that have come in the past.
All can be lumped into two classes. I just want to go through a couple of them because I had no idea. Like, you know, for most of us, a fern is a fern.
But there are lots of very specific ferns, which are kind of cool. So the oldest ones are known as Lycopsida. And you and I know these for sure.
These are the club mosses. So they're called club moss, but they're not a moss. They're a fern ally.
Of course they're not.
They're called a fern. These are the things, Katy, that look like tiny little pine trees that grow on the runners. Yeah, that's a fern, or at least related.
So Lycopsida, they are the oldest of all the Turidophytes. So here this, back in the day, these were the first ones. So right after mosses, then they started getting vascular systems.
You know what we need? Vascular systems.
And height, baby. They went from being a couple inches to 160 feet tall.
That's insane.
A fern, or that little tiny pine tree plant that we see in the woods, 160 feet tall.
I don't know if that's... Yeah, that would be crazy to just think...
And to go from two inches tall, 260 feet. We talked about overly compensating.
I've been tall, I've been short for millions of years. You know what I'm going to do? Beast this, watch this.
I am done. But also... Okay, this is getting into it, but...
It can't just go from tiny to up. What was the up?
Yeah, the progression.
Yeah, I mean millions of years anyway. Continue.
Yeah, so it's the club mosses. There's other ones. There's like three orders.
It's the club mosses, the spike moss, and what's called quill warts.
Quill warts?
Yeah, quill warts.
I looked that up.
All of them have tiny little leaves, kind of like moss leaves, and they're called micro fills. So tiny leaves, micro fills. It's crazy to me that a fern or something as primitive as what we're talking about could get to be 160 feet tall.
That is really tall for something that doesn't have a trunk.
Yes, and that's what I was going to say. Remember, it's primitive.
These are not woody plants. There's no wood involved.
They're poor lives.
I mean, but I'm divorced and single, so I feel you ferns. I feel you ferns.
Okay, so then the other class. So you got those, and then you've got the polypodiopsida. Okay, polypodiopsida.
That's the main group of what we think about as ferns, but they're divided into subclasses, orders, families, yada yada yada.
The normal stuff.
This is the main group. This is 10,570 species, so by far the most. I had never heard of some of these.
You've got, in all these orders, they all have common names, thank goodness. Whisk ferns, horsetails, have heard of those.
Yeah, have heard of those.
Tongue ferns, filmy ferns, water ferns, tree ferns, have heard of those. Giant ferns. All originally, that whole group is called fern allies.
Like a fern, but not what we think of as a fern. The biggest order of those are the polypodialis, with 80% of species being that, and that's the ferns that we think of. So our ferns are the polypodialis.
And they're all lumped into that group. That's the group that slings their spores. So when they...
You can't see my hand gestures either. But it's great. When the fern uncurls, it eventually gets mature, and the spores get mature, and then they dry out, and then they fling their spores.
How far? Did you find how far they can shoot spores?
It tickles.
I saw your cat coming up on you earlier.
He's trying to get my attention. No, I did not.
Okay, you talk, and I'm going to look.
Okay, thanks.
Because this again is where my brain is going. This is one of those from our last episode.
Slinging spores.
How far? If humans adapted, something that... Let me just look.
Slinging their spores? That's terrifying. Terrifying.
And they're so... Like as a female, would you have to...
We're not going to go there.
Would you have to catch it?
No, no, no. We would have went extinct because I wouldn't.
Well, thankfully, what happens here is that they sling their spores, and their spores land on the ground, and they become those gametophytes, which are completely independent. But yeah, so they're all in that group.
So it does say it's comparative to like a catapult, the mechanism is, which we know that... Okay, but there's two snaps. Six snaps.
Basically, the first snap occurs as it would with any elastic material that is pulled back and then released. This happens within a few 10 microseconds. The second snap is also fast, but slower than the first, occurring in 10 milliseconds.
And this happens as water flows through the walls of the annulus.
Okay, we're not... Anyway.
I'm going to keep looking. Somebody has to know how far...
How far are you slinging your spore? So anyway, ferns in general, they're most common in tropical and subtropical areas, although they have four favorite habitats. Normally, you will find ferns in either moist, shady forests, crevices and rock faces, acid wetlands, including bogs and swamps, and in tropical trees.
And that's like Katy's thing, her epiphytes.
Love me good epiphytes.
So those are the four places you're usually going to find them. Ferns can be anywhere from two centimeters tall. Okay, so we're talking moss tiny, all the way to 65 feet tall with your tree ferns.
So they're not as tall as they were back in prehistoric times, but they're still pretty hefty. All fern leaves are called fronds. And like I said, some are terrestrial growing on the ground, some are epiphytic, which means they grow on another plant, not necessarily a tree, but at least some other plant.
Young ferns are called fiddleheads, as they do look kind of like the head of a fiddle or a violin before they unfurl. And some species are male or female, while others are both male and female.
Okay, so I do have an answer here. Okay, so it does primarily depend on wind, which...
Right, we said wind or water.
Yeah, it would be terrifying again with humans. So if you figure, if there was no wind, let's just say there's no wind, it can average about two to three meters. So if you figure a fern, an average fern nowadays...
Like three feet tall.
Yeah, one to three feet. So let's double that. So six foot tall human.
So if we had a six foot tall human, then they could... Could do, yeah, six, one oh six meters, two to three meters. So it'd be six meters.
Which is three. Yeah, which is 18 feet. That's a...
I mean, and then it can go farther if it's in the wind, which would be even more terrifying. If it's just like... Anyway, that is one adaptation that's probably best human did not.
Yes.
So just a few fun fun fern facts to end the episode. Some ferns can live up to a hundred years. No idea they could live so long.
Some fiddleheads are edible. The study of ferns is called pteridology.
That one I didn't know.
That's with a silent P.
Kind of like pteridology.
Yeah.
Pteridology.
In Victorian times, you would have liked Victorian times, Katy, because there was fern fever. It's literally was called fern fever, where ferns was a motif on everything.
I believe it.
Like dishes, clothes, baby things, like all of it. They were obsessed with ferns.
Shirt hats.
They had all their own fern merch. It just went... Just so everyone went crazy for the fern.
Got me some fern fever.
Yeah.
Ferns are very prominent in folklore. Some species are evergreen. Some species are used in traditional medicines.
There is, for all you listeners who are more fascinated with ferns, there is an American Fern Society. You are absolutely, I'm sure, welcome to join.
I'm sure you're... I'm sure they would love to have people. Just anyone.
Just anyone.
And then last but not least, so Katy talked about the roles and purpose of moss. I didn't find a lot of stuff about that about ferns.
What is a fern's purpose, Laura?
I don't know. I didn't buy... I feel terrible.
But fern's purpose for now and nowadays, most of our coal and natural gas comes from ferns.
And micro habitats, which is where I come in with the bird's nest epiphytes, which is micro habitats, as well as shelter and shade.
Plus being edible, these traditional medicines, and then the fact that all of our gas and coal come from fossilized ferns. So, you know, Katy and I come from coal country. That's all during the Carboniferous period.
Marshal-a-shale. Marshal-a-shale.
But yeah, that's pretty much, it was all ferns. That's when ferns ruled the planet, and they all died.
Oh yeah, they're 160 feet freaking tall. Yeah, they would rule.
Ruled the planet.
They ruled the planet.
I would love to see some big ferns. Me too.
Like that would have been freaking awesome.
I mean, I would still like to see a hundred, I would still like to see a 60 foot fern. No, right? Like the tree ferns.
But they don't grow around here. Our biggest ones around here are like the ostrich ferns, which are still pretty tall ferns. But...
World's tallest fern.
It's some tree fern. And by tree, I mean it looks like a tree. Like it's like a palm, it looks like a palm tree.
Oh, okay. I know what you're talking about now.
Not one that lives in a tree.
So currently, the tallest fern in the world is the tree fern sciathea australius. Of course, it's gotta be an australia.
You didn't even hesitate.
Listen, sometimes I just grow a pear, and I just go through it with confidence, and just everyone's just gonna trust that I know what I'm saying. But it grows to a-
Just throws on a toga and says that Latin.
Right? But they grow to a height of 65 feet, 6 inches, and has fronds up to 9 feet, which is crazy for a frond. That's awesome.
Again, I really feel like I need to just make- Yeah, of course. Okay, Southern Victoria and Australia.
I mean, in the name, New South Wales. Yeah, it's just huge. I know what these are.
I actually have seen these before. Anyway, yeah. Again, ferns are pretty-
I mean, both are interesting. Again, like we said earlier, it's like the lichen and that it's something that if you really take the time to stop and look, and I'm telling you, I mean, my ex-husband, he was kind of interested in this stuff, but I feel sorry for the soul if I find an ex-husband that I'm like, I got to expose someone else to all this knowledge again.
Unless they already know it. You should just have them listen to the podcast first.
Be like, listen, first-
Before you even really get into a relationship.
Simulation number one, this is the real me.
Educate yourself.
Educate, because there will be a quiz later. Thank you very much. Done.
How tall did I say a fern was? And done.
65 feet.
What is a lichen? Tell me.
Yeah, so as we said, I think even though they're considered primitive, they're not boring.
No, I don't think so.
Once you stop and look, you'll notice them everywhere, and they really are magical. I feel sorry for the soul who doesn't think that they're magical and amazing, like if you're not struck by a moss-covered log in the dappled sunlight of a forest.
If that doesn't touch you.
If that doesn't move you to tears. Just Laura in a forest.
You're missing something in the world.
Listen, did we ever talk in this episode about that video with the trees, the people screaming? About the deforestation? I don't think so.
There's a video out there somewhere, guys. You just gotta Google it. And some people, I mean, Laura and I love our forest, but some people are just extreme.
And there is a video, I don't even remember what it's called, but I'm sure if you just Google, like people screaming in a forest, there was a group. And I don't think I've ever laughed so hard because they're just sitting out in the middle of the woods, and it's like, why did they have to die? And they're like, because they're cutting companies.
Globalizing the pain. Yeah, because they're so upset about the deforestation. Listen, I'm just as upset about deforestation, more so than the common person, but not as much as these people are.
I would just sit and go scream in the woods. Do I want to recreate this video? Absolutely, because it would be phenomenal, because it is really funny.
But, yeah, to just go scream in the middle of the woods.
I feel like we'd have to go, like, I was going to say we'd have to find the middle of nowhere.
The really middle of nowhere.
Or make a video where we're just screaming in the woods.
Because listen, I am loud. I am loud, and I have never had somebody tell me that they can't hear me. And I used to give presentations in senior retirement homes, and I've never had somebody tell me they couldn't hear me.
So, again, my voice is going to travel if I'm going to be screaming about Upset Forest in the woods. God bless our listeners.
Yeah.
To end it, I have a patch that says, it has an inhaler on it, and it says, it ain't easy being wheezy.
Oh, man.
Isn't that amazing?
That's awesome.
Ain't easy being wheezy. Ain't easy being wheezy. All right, folks.
Thanks to Plants.
Thank you, Plants. Yeah. Very cool.
Very cool. All right. So this is episode two?
Two.
Yeah, two, man, of the new season.
So we went from ridiculous to heavy science, and hopefully you're still with us. We're kind of going back and forth. Next week should be light science.
Yeah.
We're going to talk about fall, because we're basic.
Because we're basic. And well, I would say you're in fall. It's still freaking 90 degrees down here in Texas, and it's September.
So it's been unreasonably hot up here, but the hurricane is about to hit us, so it's going to cool things down.
I almost say, oh, good. But you know, well, we do like that cool weather.
I like fall weather.
No, I do too. It's just, yeah, Texas will eventually see it one day. It'll cool down below, you know, in the 90s.
So here's hoping. All right, everybody, until next week. Bye.