Mosses: Possibly the earliest land plants?
Moss plants have no structural strength and rely on close packing to achieve only modest heights. Their tissues are soft and permeable and they can only exist and reproduce under moist environments. Such plants probably represented the earliest colonization of the terrestrial environment, although no fossil evidence for this has been discovered.
Moss
Kingdom : Plantae
Division : Bryophyta
Class : Bryopsida
Wherever they occur, mosses require moisture to survive because of the small size and thinness of tissues, lack of cuticle (waxy covering to prevent water loss), and the need for liquid water to complete fertilisation. Some mosses can survive desiccation, returning to life within a few hours of rehydration.
There is a substantial market in mosses gathered from the wild. The uses for intact moss are principally in the florist trade and for home decoration. Decaying moss in the genus Sphagnum is also the major component of peat, which is "mined" both as a soil additive and for use in smoking malt in the production of Scotch whisky. There are growing concerns in parts of the world where this trade is growing, that significant environmental damage may be caused by the activities of commercial moss harvesters. In WW2, moss was used as a sort of a bandaid on soldiers wounds and some early people used it as a diaper due to its high absorbancy.
Fontinalisantipyretica
In rural UK, Fontinalis antipyretica was traditionally used to extinguish fires as it could be found in substantial quantities in slow moving rivers and the moss retained large volumes of water which helped extinguish the flames.
