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Mossiness. Jonhson.

An alternately produced form of certain cryptogamous plants, as ferns, mosses, and the like, which bears antheridia and archegonia, and so has sexual fructification, as contrasted with the sporophore, which is nonsexual, but produces spores in countless number. In ferns the oöphore is a minute prothallus; in mosses it…

Closed by a lid or cover, as the capsules of the mosses.

The lid of the urnlike capsule of mosses.

A minute jointed filament growing among the archegonia and antheridia of mosses, or with the spore cases, etc., of other flowerless plants.

cate blue-gray color. -- Pearl millet, Egyptian millet (Penicillaria spicata). -- Pearl moss. See Carrageen. -- Pearl moth (Zoöl.), any moth of the genus Margaritia; -- so called on account of its pearly color. -- Pearl oyster (Zoöl.), any one of several species of large tropical marine bivalve mollusks of the genu…

A substance of vegetable origin, consisting of roots and fibers, moss, etc., in various stages of decomposition, and found, as a kind of turf or bog, usually in low situations, where it is always more or less saturated with water. It is often dried and used for fuel. Peat bog, a bog containing peat; also, peat as it oc…

A slender support of any special organ, as that of a capsule in mosses, an air vesicle in algæ, or a sporangium in ferns.

A saclike involucre which incloses the young fruit in most hepatic mosses. See Illust. of Hepatica.

The leafy involucre surrounding the fruit stalk of mosses; perichætium; perichete.

In mosses, the involucral bracts of a male flower.

The fringe of teeth around the orifice of the capsule of mosses. It consists of 4, 8, 16, 32, or 64 teeth, and may be either single or double.

rican moth (Heliothis phloxiphaga). It is destructive to phloxes. -- Phlox subulata, the moss pink. See under Moss.

o Dianthus deltoides; also, to the ragged robin. -- Maiden pink, Dianthus deltoides. -- Moss pink. See under Moss. -- Pink needle, the pin grass; -- so called from the long, tapering points of the carpels. See Alfilaria. -- Sea pink. See Thrift.

A low creeping evergreen plant (Pyxidanthera barbulata), with mosslike leaves and little white blossoms, found in New Jersey and southward, where it flowers in earliest spring. Pixy ring, a fairy ring or circle. [Prov. Eng.] -- Pixy stool (Bot.), a toadstool or mushroom. [Prov. Eng.]

Any pleurocarpic moss.

Side-fruited; -- said of those true mosses in which the pedicels or the capsules are from lateral archegonia; -- opposed to Ant: acrocarpous.

A stalk which bears the fructification in some lichens, as in the so-called reindeer moss.

growth from the spore in certain cryptogamous plants; as, the proembryo, or protonema, of mosses.

The primary growth from the spore of a moss, usually consisting of branching confervoid filaments, on any part of which stem and leaf buds may be developed.