Plants are ubiquitous in terrestrial environments around the world. They produce their own food through photosynthesis, which uses a green pigment that gives them their characteristic coloration. Unlike animals, most plants can not move very fast and are almost always rooted firmly in the ground, so many species have developed unique mechanisms for defense and reproductions. Plants often arm themselves with prickly thorns and itchy chemicals and spread their genes and offspring by wind, water and animal transport.
Bryophytes: Mosses and Liverworts
These two groups are the oldest groups of plants, being only distantly related to the rest of land plants. They lack the complex vascular system that allows the more "advanced" plants to transport materials over long distances, meaning that they can't grow as tall or large as vascular plants and can't leave moist areas. Nonetheless, they are extremely successful, being found in nearly every habitat possible across the entire planet, including cities. Dozens of species of mosses are commonly seen in sidewalk cracks and neglected flowerbeds in the gray jungle, with countless more being found on soil, trees and rocks in the parks littered across urban areas. They are also notoriously hard to identify, with many species requiring careful microscope examination to determine. Due to this, only the most distinctive species and genera in our area are represented in this guide.
Silver Bryum
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Brocade moss
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Sphagnum Mosses
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Pteridophytes: Ferns and Fern allies
Although this group of plants is often associated with prehistoric scenes, many species can be found thriving in our cities. Ferns often have two different types of fronds: a fertile one that holds the reproductive structures (called sporangia) and a sterile that doesn't. The fronds can either be very similar or dramatically different, in the latter case they can even look like completely different plants! Fern fronds are commonly split up into smaller pinna, or "sub-fronds", which can be further divided one or more times into pinnules, or "sub-sub-fronds".
The closely related Horsetails and the more distant Clubmosses look very different. Horsetails consist of long, often wiry green stalks that look similar to grasses, but are distingished by the distinctive rings on their stems, making them appear segmented. They often have whorls of thin tubular leaves sprouting from those rings; those that lack this feature are called scouring-rushes due to their historical usage as a scouring material for pots and pans. Clubmosses look like tiny conifers, often bearing large yellowish cones above their photosynthetic branches. Although they're often lumped with Ferns due to being vascular plants that reproduce with spores, they are only distantly related to them, and are as close to Ferns as they are to all other Vascular Plants.
The closely related Horsetails and the more distant Clubmosses look very different. Horsetails consist of long, often wiry green stalks that look similar to grasses, but are distingished by the distinctive rings on their stems, making them appear segmented. They often have whorls of thin tubular leaves sprouting from those rings; those that lack this feature are called scouring-rushes due to their historical usage as a scouring material for pots and pans. Clubmosses look like tiny conifers, often bearing large yellowish cones above their photosynthetic branches. Although they're often lumped with Ferns due to being vascular plants that reproduce with spores, they are only distantly related to them, and are as close to Ferns as they are to all other Vascular Plants.
Princess Pine
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Sensitive Fern
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Cinnamon Fern
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Ebony Spleenwort
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Christmas Fern
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Netted Chain Fern
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Pinophyta: Conifers
Conifers, like ferns, illict an image of prehistoric scenes filled with long gone animals. Many species are common in cities though, usually in parks and streets near them. Conifers produce seeds but produce cones instead of flowers. Usually, conifer leaves, called needles, are thin and pointy, Most are evergreen but one species in New York drops its needles every fall.
Angiosperms: Flowering Plants
This group is huge in both size and in variation. The dizzying diversity of flowering plants are united by their namesake, their flowers. Those flowers, though, can be inconspicuous and hard to find, so what's probably the best way to identify this group is to rule out all other groups above. This group has been subdivided into two groups based on their growth habits