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There are more than 15,000 different kinds of lichens.
Some look like a flaky crust growing on rocks and trees.
Some are flat and leafy looking. Some look like little bushy plants
and others hang from the trees. Reindeer lichen looks like tiny antlers.
(photo)
A strange thing about lichens is - they
don't need soil to grow. Some can grow on rocks. Lichens help
break down the rock into soil. Then mosses and ferns are able to grow.
Later other plants and shrubs will also grow.
Many animals depend on lichens for food. In winter caribou on the
Arctic tundra would starve without lichens. They can smell lichen under the snow and dig to get to the plants.
Small mammals use lichens
to line their nests or burrows.
LICHENS (li-kens) are one type of plant found in the Arctic.
A lichen looks like one plant but is made up of two different
kinds of plants - algae (al-jee) and fungi (fun-ji) .
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Mosses are flowerless plants with very tiny leaves and no roots. Each plant has tiny threadlike rootlets (called rhizoids) that absorb moisture and minerals from the soil. On moist ground hundreds of tiny moss plants form spongy cushions or mats.
Moss grows in wet places and in places where there is not much soil. Moss will even grow on rocks.
Some birds and small mammals use moss to line their nests.
** INTRODUCTION ** PEOPLE ** ANIMALS ** PLANTS ** CLIMATE CHANGE ** ARCTIC INDEX ** |
J.Giannetta
August,2000
updated April 2017
background: Arctic poppy