Flowerless plants; ferns, mushrooms, mosses, lichens, and seaweeds

MOSSES
is pink, but later they turn to red, orange, or brown.
They make the moss look like a green pincushion well
filled with pins.
After a time small sacs appear at the top of these
hairlike stalks. At first they are but little thicker than
the stalk. Soon they grow larger and take different
shapes. Some are pear-shaped, and some are nearly
round; others urn-shaped; or they may be long and
slim. A few are like cubes or cylinders. One form
looks much like a closed parasol; another resembles a
small bug. These are the capsules that contain the
spores.
Until nearly ripe many of the capsules are covered
with little caps having high peaks and long laps. These
protect them from the sunshine and rain until they are
fully grown. Then the hood or cap is torn from its
support and carried to the top of the capsule, where it
stays until the spores are nearly ripe. At length it
falls off altogether. Then we find that under it there
is a little lid which covers the mouth of the capsule.
When the lid comes off there is found around the
mouth of the capsule a fringe of single or double rows of
teeth. These open in sunshine and close in rainy
weather. If you were to examine the inside of the cap-
sule with a microscope, you would find that the spores,
inclosed in little bags or spore cases, grow around a
column or pillar in the center.
When the spores are ripe, it is a curious sight to see
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