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sphagnum

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sphagnum

any moss of the genus Sphagnum, of temperate bogs, having leaves capable of holding much water: layers of these mosses decay to form peat
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Sphagnum

 

a genus of bog, or peat, mosses (Sphagnales). Of the 320 species, 42 are found in the USSR. The genus consists predominantly of mosses that grow in dense aggregates, forming large cushions or unbroken carpets on sphagnum bogs. The plants are less commonly found in rain forests. The soft, erect stem is 10–20 cm tall; the branches are arranged in clusters. Both the stem and the single-layer leaves contain a large number of dead water-bearing cells, whose pores readily absorb water. This accounts for the high moisture capacity of sphagnum mosses and promotes rapid development of upriver swamps in places where the mosses appear. The lower stems die off annually and form peat; the apical branches, however, continue to grow. Sphagnum mosses are distributed predominantly in the tundra and forest zones of the northern hemisphere; in the southern hemisphere they are found high in the mountains or, less commonly, in the plains of the temperate zone.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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References in periodicals archive
The upper part of the sediment core that includes the living parts of Sphagnum mosses has different characteristics and should be interpreted with caution (Swindles et al.
Knapp (1966) interpreted the recognition of two classes: one Astelio-Oreoboletea for the peatlands in hyperhumid territory identifiable as cushion bogs, and a Rostkovio-Sphagnetea for acidophilus Sphagnum bogs.
The experiment consisted of ten blocks (mother plants), with four layering by each plant in each period of the year (two layers with sphagnum and two with coconut fiber).
Get a top cutting from a healthy mature plant about three inches long and wrap the lower portion with sterilized sphagnum moss.
Another advantage of sphagnum moss is that it has antiseptic properties due to being extremely acidic, meaning it prohibits the growth of bacteria.
The first mire species taken under monitoring in 1996 was Sphagnum lindbergii.
Keywords: Peatland, bog, Sphagnum, Larix laricina, succession
More classical (Crum & Anderson, 1981) as well as modem classifications (Goffinet & Shaw, 2009) treat the sphagnum mosses as a monotypic class, the Sphagnopsida.
This study investigated the leaching of selected trace elements (Cs, Li, Be, Sr and Ba) from plant growth media made of two coal fly ashes (one from semi-bituminous coal and one from lignite), and from these ashes combined with the soil and with the soil and sphagnum peat moss.
Plants that grow there include cloudberry and crowberry as well as sphagnum mosses, sundew, bog rosemary and cotton grass, which form a habitat for invertebrates such as the emperor moth and mountain bumblebee and for nesting wading birds such as the curlew.
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