{"id":437,"date":"2024-12-18T09:59:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-18T17:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/?p=437"},"modified":"2025-05-01T13:54:33","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T20:54:33","slug":"common-clubmoss-lycopodium-clavatum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/2024\/12\/18\/common-clubmoss-lycopodium-clavatum\/","title":{"rendered":"Common clubmoss (Lycopodium clavatum)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>With their evergreen foliage, yellow spore-bearing cones, and ropey stems, club-mosses or lycopods (<em>Lycopodium<\/em>&nbsp;species, in the broad sense) are nearly perfect for shaping Christmas wreaths. Actually, they may be too perfect for their own good. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, club-mosses were often over-harvested for their use as holiday greens. This, in combination with their slow growth rate and loss of forest habitat, has made club-mosses uncommon in many parts of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Club-mosses are not actually mosses, because they have water-conducting vascular tissue. Nor are they miniature conifers, as some of their other common names (running cedar, ground pine, princess pine, or running pine) would suggest. Club-mosses are similar to ferns in that they reproduce by spores rather than seeds and are often called \u201cfern-allies\u201d in older books. Lycopods, and their relatives the spike-mosses (<em>Selaginella<\/em>) and quillworts (<em>Isoetes<\/em>) belong to their own, separate evolutionary lineage that includes some of the earliest plants to colonize land. During the Carboniferous period (280-345 million years ago), tree lycopods were among the dominant plant species in the swamp forests, now preserved as coal seams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp; &nbsp;Traditionally, taxonomists placed the thirty or so species of North American club-mosses into the single genus&nbsp;<em>Lycopodium<\/em>. Anatomical and molecular studies over the last 40 years have resulted in&nbsp;<em>Lycopodium<\/em>&nbsp;being split into at least seven genera, each differing in the orientation and shape of their leaves and the organization of their spore-bearing structures. Only two species remain in&nbsp;<em>Lycopodium<\/em>, including the species shown here,&nbsp;<em>Lycopodium clavatum<\/em>, which occurs widely across northern Eurasia and North America and in scattered mountainous areas of the tropics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp; &nbsp;Club-moss spores were once widely used in fireworks, magic tricks, early flash photography, and medicine. Lycopod spores are tiny, extremely oil-rich, and have a high surface to volume ratio. They explode when burned, creating a short-lived (but impressive) flash. The high oil content of the spores also repels water, making them useful in coating medicines and other things that might clump together when wet. \u2013 Walter Fertig, December 18, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wsu-row wsu-row--halves\" >\r\n    \n<div class=\"wsu-column\"  style=\"\">\r\n\t\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"533\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/3476\/2025\/04\/lycopodium-clavatum-specimen_orig.jpg\" alt=\"Common clubmoss (Lycopodium clavatum).\" class=\"wp-image-295\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/3476\/2025\/04\/lycopodium-clavatum-specimen_orig.jpg 533w, https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/3476\/2025\/04\/lycopodium-clavatum-specimen_orig-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/3476\/2025\/04\/lycopodium-clavatum-specimen_orig-100x150.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 533px) 100vw, 533px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n<\/div>\r\n\n\n<div class=\"wsu-column\"  style=\"\">\r\n\t\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"634\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/3476\/2025\/04\/lycopodium-clavatum-photo-fertig_orig.jpg\" alt=\"Common clubmoss (Lycopodium clavatum).\" class=\"wp-image-296\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/3476\/2025\/04\/lycopodium-clavatum-photo-fertig_orig.jpg 634w, https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/3476\/2025\/04\/lycopodium-clavatum-photo-fertig_orig-238x300.jpg 238w, https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/3476\/2025\/04\/lycopodium-clavatum-photo-fertig_orig-119x150.jpg 119w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 634px) 100vw, 634px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n<\/div>\r\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With their evergreen foliage, yellow spore-bearing cones, and ropey stems, club-mosses or lycopods (Lycopodium&nbsp;species, in the broad sense) are nearly perfect for shaping Christmas wreaths. Actually, they may be too perfect for their own good. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, club-mosses were often over-harvested for their use as holiday greens. This, in combination [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":295,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"wsuwp_university_location":[],"wsuwp_university_org":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":471,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions\/471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437"},{"taxonomy":"wsuwp_university_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wsuwp_university_location?post=437"},{"taxonomy":"wsuwp_university_org","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbs.wsu.edu\/ownbeyherbarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wsuwp_university_org?post=437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}