Ptychomitrium yulongshanum
Jade dragon shrunken leaf moss, belonging to the bryophyte plant, shrunken leaf moss family, shrunken leaf moss genus, is endemic to Yunnan, the photo taken in Yulong Snow Mountain.
It was not until the 21st century that botanists recognized it, and because the type specimen was collected in the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, it was named the Jade Dragon Leaf Moss. However, they are extremely rare, since the publication of this species in 2001, scholars have only found a few traces of them within a radius of less than 13 square kilometers on the southern slope of Yunlong Snow Mountain, and they are truly "extremely small species" among bryophytes, so they are also known as "snow mountain hermits".
The jade dragon leaf moss is short in stature, the handle is naturally curved and upright, and the base of the cap is missing, resembling an inverted petal, and the cap is sharply conical. During rainy months and dry seasons, you're bound to mistake it for two unrelated species. Like most mosses, they love moist environments, but when they encounter dry and lack of water, their jade dragon leaf moss performance is shocking, when the leaves will be strongly twisted, curled into a gray mass, completely dormant, as if they have long been dead. The most exaggerated thing is that they can actually withstand drought for up to half a year. However, as long as they are given moisture and sunlight, the Jade Dragon Leaf Moss will be revived in an instant in a very short period of time. Some people ask, how short is extremely short? "Probably if you shoot with a camera lens, you can only use the slow-motion lens to see the speed at which the blades stretch." Dr. Ma Wenwen of the Kunming Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said that after the "resurrection", the jade dragon shrunken leaf moss instantly stretched out its curled leaves and gradually restored its green vitality.
Why do they resurrect so quickly? This is because the leaves of bryophytes are almost all single-cell layers, no stratum corneum, so they are very sensitive to water and supply in the environment, if there is no dry water environment, then the water loss is very fast, and on the contrary, once replenished, their rate of absorption of water is also very fast. The leaves of the Jade Dragon Leaf Reduction Moss are thinner and therefore faster.
Regarding moss, people are more familiar with the Qing Dynasty poet Yuan Ming's writing that "moss flowers are as small as rice, and they also learn to bloom peonies." In fact, whether the moss flower is talking about moss or not, the academic community has always questioned this. What academics call mosses actually refers to mosses, mosses and horned mosses, although they are often stepped on by our feet, they are solid higher plants. Moreover, with more than 20,000 species of moss, it can survive in almost any environment on the earth and is an indispensable and important part of biodiversity.
Ma Wenwen is a member of the Bryophyte Professional Committee of the Botanical Society of China, an international member of bryophytology, and a science and technology commissioner of Yunnan Province. After graduating with a Ph.D. in 2009, he worked at the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, engaged in the management and taxonomy of bryophyte specimens, and was good at species identification of bryophytes in southwest China. He has participated in the comprehensive scientific investigation of national nature reserves and the compilation and research of bryophyte species diversity list for many times, collected 12,000 specimens, more than 20,000 copies, and photographed nearly 2,286 groups of bryophyte ecological photos, 27,000 photos. He has published or participated in the publication of 21 peer-reviewed academic papers, and edited and published 2 academic monographs.
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Text: Lian Huiling
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