A CLUB MOSS, OR WOLF'S FOOT
LYCOPODIUM COMPLANATUM (PROBABLY)Monday, 7:45 AM. 46 degrees, wind SSW, calm. The channel is obscured by fog, the sky is overcast and there is .2” of new rain in the gage. The barometer predicts partly cloud weather. I don’t know if this is the weather change I have been anticipating, but I doubt it. In any case I am not hunting this morning, still waiting for a significant change in the weather.
The trailing plant pictured is a club moss, allied with ferns, horsetails and other primitive, non-flowering plants. Along with ferns, club mosses have a distinct alternation of generations, the more obvious life form being the 2n or sporophyte generation (shown above), which has two sets of chromosomes. The alternate, or 1n generation, which is usually very obscure, is the offspring of the 2n generation plant. It lives and grows separately to produce the male and female gametes, which then combine to form another 2n plant such as the one shown. Higher plants and animals have the alternate, 1n generation subsumed within the 2n generation life form. I hope I haven’t confused your memories of high school biology, but it is the best that I can offer. The plant pictured is, I believe, the running pine (of course not a pine at all), Lycopodium clavatum. Most of us are familiar with the ground pine, which I have also heard locally called prince’s pine, L. obscurum, and the ground cedar, L. complanatum, because they are much collected n the north woods and used in Christmas wreaths. There are more than a dozen species in the Lycopodiaceae in North America, and I make no claim as to knowing them at all well. The family name Lycopod is from the Greek, meaning wolf’s foot, a more distinctive and descriptive name than club moss, if you want my opinion.
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