Meesia uliginosa

Meesia uliginosa

Meesia uliginosa ( German hair - breakage moss, bog moss - breaking ) is a moss species from the family Meesiaceae.

Features

Meesia uliginosa forms yellowish green lawns that are high at low altitudes to 10 inches, in the Alps often only 1 centimeter. The plants are branched and rust below rhizoidfilzig. The upright projecting to einseitswendigen leaves are up to about 3 millimeters long and 0.8 millimeters wide, narrow tongue-shaped pointed to linear and dull. The leaf margins are strongly rolled over. The very wide rib ends in the leaf tip and shows in cross section small exterior and interior larger cells. The leaf cells are square to narrow rectangular and about 10 microns wide. The brownish, slightly curved and blunt ceiling celled spore capsule is lifted up from the to 8 inches long seta on the mossy lawn. Spores are finely papillose, yellowish green and 40-56 microns in size.

Habitat requirements and distribution

The moss grows in shady, moist to wet and calcareous or base-rich sites, especially on humus on slopes or steep cracks, under coppice, on limestone or in fens. In the Alps - here it is the most common species of the genus - it comes at altitudes of about 700 to 3000 meters frequently until dispersed. In Germany there were earlier isolated against on suitable bog sites outside of the Alps in the whole area, but today it's lost, apart from a Fund in the Erzgebirge of recent times.

Globally, the species is circumpolar distribution.