I have seen many papers about plant biodiversity (past and present), biogeography, macroecology, and conservation. For some reason, they almost always only talk about “vascular plants” but never simply “plants”. Why is that? What are mosses, liverworts, and hornworts put on the wayside? They are ne…

two reasons: they are much harder to Identify, less people work (and worked) with them, so our current knowledge of distribution is less reliably complete, esp. outside Europa and N. America. The scant historical record also means it is hard to identifiy non- native mosses (there are quite a few …

[image] ljazz: I think they would actually need their own phytogeographic realms and provinces. And yet it would be interesting and instructive to compare these with those of vascular plants.

Thank you. I was just gonna say that. You explained perfectly. Respect to bro because he knows what he’s talking about.

[image] ljazz: mosses both areas look similar, they can grow a similar ammount of days in both areas; an It is true that mosses work differently than vascular plants, but can one also not make the argument that vascular plants are extremely diverse among themselves? Every species has its own …

[image] insectilluminatigetshrekt: And if I may ask, what makes bryophytes much harder to identify than vascular plants? Most of them require microscopy work to ID at all, and there is also a severe shortage of decent field guides or keys. Most papers about them are very technical and hard to…

It is true that mosses work differently than vascular plants, but can one also not make the argument that vascular plants are extremely diverse among themselves? One could; and it is not entirely wrong. However, usually, in vascular plants, there are detectable and repeating patterns in many gro…

Hmm. I thought that mosses, being much more dessication sensitive than vascular plants, would actually have more restricted and endemic distributions than vascular plants. Because seeds are truly hardly little guys, they can be transported across wind, oceans and migrating animals and stay dormant b…

moss spores are tiny, and also quite hardy and can be dispersed by wind very far. Many mosses are also dispersed by gemmae (non- sexual propagules, usually some form of a bunch of cells, capable of makinga whole plant) Plant seeds are mostly large and heavy, and even those with special adaptation …

This is exactly right, i work in wetlands in the soggy northeastern United States and the same patterns hold true here. Some mosses, like Sphagnums, can be important indicators of tiny scale conditions within a wetland. They do say a lot about moisture and temperature. But they are not good indicat…

So this begs the question. What do you think floristic regions based on bryophytes would look like? The few maps that do exist seem to suggest they are more diverse in higher than lower latitudes, and more in montane areas than lowlands. Weather this is sampling bias or represents a real trend I hav…

Why are bryophytes always left out of plant discussion?

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Why are bryophytes always left out of plant discussion?

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