Here's a moss I've seen in Europe and Australia, the bonfire moss, Funaria hygrometrica. It is common in disturbed sites, like recent building sites, and as advertised on burned patches.
It starts out bright green with thin pointy capsules, the capsules get fatter and have a red blob on the end with a little lighter green center. They eventually turn brown and shriveled.
I would love to know if these have been introduced with human spread or predate European colonization in Australia.
@Studiowild F. hygrometrica is considered an atmospheric traveller, i.e. the spores may travel very long distances in the atmosphere and the longest known longevity for F. hygrometrica spores is 11 years. I think Macquarie Island and Antarctic regions are the only place where bonfire moss is considered introduced?
Love your drawing and notes!
@kaarne Thank you, this is a much better answer than I hoped for! The phylogenetics of long-lived atmospheric travelers must be a headache... but what a cool little moss!
Maybe a silly question, but is it the same with Bryum argenutm?
@kaarne Thanks, and also for the very cool resource!
I ended up with more questions that a literature dive did not answer, but I'm sure will stay with me for years. (Does altitude influence atmospheric dispersal success in mosses? Are cosmopolitan generalist mosses more likely to disperse to high altitudes?)
@Studiowild I was intrigued by the altitude thing too! I’d never even thought about it, but it’d be easy to see why upland species might be more efficiently dispersed by wind than, say, mosses growing in lowland wooded mires.
The fact that in some species 80% of the spores are scattered further than 2 meters from the capsule is quite amazing too. They’re so tiny yet they have their ways of getting themselves out in the world.
Ash
J 🏳️🌈 no se yks Viitanen