Mosses

Terrarium plants - Mosses - Green up your terrarium!

Hardly any other type of plant spreads an atmosphere of primordial growth and freshness like mosses. They cover the ground, trees and rocks with soft cushions, mats and slopes and fascinate with their diverse shades of green and filigree structures.

"Mosses" - these are the mosses in the narrower sense (Bryophyta), liverworts and hornworts, three separate groups that nevertheless have much in common. There are also "eternal" fern prothallia, which are very reminiscent of certain liverworts.

Mosses are most conspicuous and diverse in rainy and foggy, rather cool areas such as tropical mountain cloud forests and temperate rainforests. But there are also mosses in dry areas, even in deserts, because as so-called alternating-humidity plants they dry out completely and can also revive after a long time when humidified. Mosses are rootless, they only have rhizoids, hair-like adhesive organs. They absorb water and nutrients over the entire surface. Mosses can hardly store water, even though moss cushions can soak up water like a sponge and hold it for some time.

There are now many more aquarium mosses than terrarium-kept terrestrial mosses. However, most aquarium mosses can grow not only under water, but also above it if there is enough moisture. They often come from places like stones and wood in the flood and splash zone of streams and waterfalls. Only a few species such as Fissidens fontanus and Fontinalis species are pure aquatic mosses. For this reason, we also offer aquarium mosses such as Taxiphyllum and Vesicularia species, Leptodictyum riparium or Plagiomnium cf. affine for terrarium planting.

As a terrarium decoration, "pincushion Moss" is also available. It is the true white moss (Leucobryum glaucum), which also grows in our latitudes in soil-acid forests. In terrariums, at least, it lasts a long time.