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

MOSSES
like plant appears much like the prothallium of the
fern. Soon buds of young moss plants appear. On
these the plants grow and produce spores which in
their turn fall to the ground and grow into new plants.
Roots will grow from any part of a moss plant that
is kept dark and moist. Often roots and new plants
will grow from a leaf that is broken off. Mosses thus
spread very rapidly.
TREE MOSSES
Do you remember that we said there were mosses
that looked like small trees? The picture shows you
some of these. See what long roots they have. Do they
not look like the slender creeping rootstocks of some
ferns ? The little treelike plants come up from this
underground stem in the same way that fern fronds
spring up from their rootstocks. Because this moss is
so much like little trees it is called tree moss.
Notice how the stems bearing the capsules come out
from among the green leaves at the side of the stem.
There are quite a number of our mosses whose capsules
grow in this way. The tree mosses are among the largest
of these. The capsules nearly always stand up
straight at the ends of their long stems. When young
the capsules are green, but as the spores ripen they turn
brown. The beak at the top has a long point. When
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