Glistening Spanish Moss is a photograph by Lisa Wooten which was uploaded on March 19th, 2024.
Glistening Spanish Moss
Featured: A Women's Touch 3/20/2024
A sprawling tree with intricate branches is draped with Spanish moss under a bright blue sky. The sun... more
by Lisa Wooten
Title
Glistening Spanish Moss
Artist
Lisa Wooten
Medium
Photograph - Photographs
Description
Featured: A Women's Touch 3/20/2024
A sprawling tree with intricate branches is draped with Spanish moss under a bright blue sky. The sun filters through the leaves, casting a pattern of light and shadow. Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) is an epiphytic flowering plant that often grows upon larger trees in tropical and subtropical climates, native to much of Mexico, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Central America, South America, the Southern United States, and the West Indies and is also naturalized in Queensland (Australia). It is known as "grandpas beard" in French Polynesia.[2] In the United States from where it is most known, it is commonly found on the southern live oak (Quercus virginiana) and bald-cypress (Taxodium distichum) in the lowlands, swamps, and savannas of the southeastern United States from southeast Virginia south to Florida and west to Texas and southern Arkansas.[3][4]
This plant's specific name usneoides means "resembling Usnea",[5] and it indeed superficially resembles its namesake Usnea, also known as beard lichen, but in fact Spanish moss is neither a moss nor a lichen. Instead, it is a flowering plant (angiosperm) in the family Bromeliaceae (the bromeliads) which grows hanging from tree branches in full sun through partial shade. Formerly this plant has been placed in the genera Anoplophytum, Caraguata, and Renealmia.[6] The northern limit of its natural range is Northampton County,[7] Virginia, with colonial-era reports in southern Maryland[8][9][10][11] where no populations are now known to be extant.[11] The primary range is in the southeastern United States (including Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands), through Argentina, growing where the climate is warm enough and has a relatively high average humidity. It has been introduced to similar locations around the world, including Hawaii and Australia. Wikipedia
Uploaded
March 19th, 2024
