Few plants are green in the forest this time of year, save conifers, mountain laurel, wintergreen, and clubmosses. Clubmosses are among the group of ancient extant plants for which I have a particular affinity. These plants appeared in the fossil record around 400 million years ago, not too long after plants began colonizing land around 465 million years ago (“not too long” in geological time). Alongside ferns and horsetails, clubmosses dominated during the Carboniferous period (approximately 350 million years ago), with some reaching heights as tall as 100 feet (30.5 meters). Their remnants were compressed over eons to form massive coal deposits that are mined today.
Clubmosses are not true mosses because unlike mosses, they have vascular tissue. They slowly spread over the forest floor, cloning themselves underground via rhizomes. When left undisturbed, they create dense blankets of evergreen. Clubmosses are very slow growing and rely on mycorrhizal fungi to aid in nutrition and help complete their lifecycle, a partnership that may be an ancient one, from when fungi first assisted plants in colonizing land. It can take up to 15 years for clubmosses’ reproductive cycle to be completed. For this reason, it’s best to leave them be if you happen upon them in the forest.
The spores of clubmosses are highly flammable due to their high fat content. They are extremely hydrophobic (resistant to water). In the age before gasoline, clubmosses’ explosive spores were used to power the first internal combustion machine, which debuted in 1807. It was a small craft named Le Pyréolophore, created by French inventors and brothers Nicéphore and Claude Niépce. They powered the machine with a mixture of resin, coal dust, and lycopodium (clubmoss) powder. Its maiden voyage was against the current of France’s River Saône. Shortly after its initial journey, Napoleon Bonaparte granted the machine a patent.
Historically, lycopodium powder, also known as “vegetable sulfur” and “witch meal” was also used for flash photography before flashbulbs. Today it’s still used in fireworks, magic tricks, and some special effects. It can be used in physics experiments to demonstrate phenomena such as Brownian motion (the random motion of particles suspended in a medium), to make sound waves in air visible for observation and measurement, and to make a pattern of electrostatic charge visible.
I suppose I’m fond of clubmosses for a few reasons. I like the way they hoist their strobili into the air, triumphantly dispersing spores which will ride the waves of the wind to places near and far. I like that the strobili look like Poseidon’s trident (or perhaps Aquaman’s quindent). As an elder plant species that has survived through the millennia, they seem wise. Encountering these lush green beds in the forest when few other things are green is a true delight.
So interesting- thank you