One of the oldest inhabitants of our planet are numerous species of mosses and lichens covering large areas.These plants are united by kinship with algae, but between them there are significant differences.
Lichen is a symbiosis of fungi and algae.Between fungal fibers grow algae.This structure allows the body of the lichen plant to absorb water with the help of fungal threads and process the minerals dissolved in it into organic matter using green algae.Compared with mosses, lichens more unpretentious, but with a shortage of water dry up and die in the absence of light.
Mosses need shade and water, which suck out of the ground with special tail fiber - rhizoids, which act as roots.Different species of moss have a different structure, but they reproduce by spores.Water plays a key role in reproduction, as it is with the help of disputes males reach female zygotes and fertilized it.
All kinds of mosses reproduce an intermediate stage - the formation of asexual plants - protofitom incapable of reproduction, which matures box disputes.As a result of meiotic spores germinate and form the protons - a threadlike structure, which was later transformed into a female or a male plant - gametophyte.Thus, there is an alternation of sexual asexual generation.
spread Moss family plants are conventionally divided into 3 classes:
1. Antotserotovye.Types of mosses in this class there are more than 300 species, the main area of ​​distribution - the tropics.Antotserotovye mosses have a unique structure - the sex organs are located in the lower layer of the plant, which is a socket from which protrudes an elongated struchkovidny sporogony having eletary - threads, contribute to a better dispersion of the dispute.
2. Liver mosses, represented by subclasses marshantsievye and yungermannievye.The first subclass includes plants, the gametophyte of which can be varied in shape and has one oily little body and sporogony primitive and devoid of partitions.Plants second subclass have several calves oily and very diverse in form gametophyte.Liverworts particularly common in the tropics and subtropics.
3. Listostebelnye.Types moss deciduous types have several tens of thousands (about 95% of all mosses) and include three subclasses: brievye, sphagnum and Andreev.By Andreev are small plants red-brown color, growing on rocks.For sphagnum characterized by straight stem and sporogony a spherical capsule.Brievye mosses are very diverse, but all the plants have special teeth for spore dispersal.
All deciduous became widespread in the forests and swamps in the northern regions.The best known are the moss Kukushkin flax, sphagnum leukobry - types of moss photo, which occurs as a serious encyclopedias, and the collection of photographs.
Mosses play a huge role in the formation of biocenoses and education of peat, which is used in the industry.For registration of the design of the garden plots used moss, which is easy to grow on their own, using the yeast, sugar, yogurt and any part of the plant.
