Nationalnyckeln till Sveriges flora och fauna

Uppsala

ArtDatabanken, SLU

Mehrbändiges Werk

400202018

In Swedish forests and bogs, one cannot fail to notice our rich diversity of mosses. Here, for once, we can compete with the tropics in species richness and that is of course why the interest in mosses is so great right here. Of the earth's approximately 20,000 known species of mosses, approximately 1,000 are found in Sweden. Mosses are part of our photosynthesizing, green plant world. A distinctive form of life, which differs in several ways from, for example, flowering plants and ferns. Among other things, they lack roots, and can absorb moisture and nutrients via the entire shoot. The mosses thrive very well in our latitudes and make up a large part of the diversity in temperate and arctic climates. Because the mosses have existed for a long time on earth, they have had time to spread over the entire globe, from Antarctica through the tropics to the Arctic.