Selaginella apoda
A tiny, creeping spikemoss from eastern North America south to Mexico and Guatemala. It forms flat, bright green mats a few centimetres high in wet meadows, on stream banks and in damp lawns. It is short-lived, easy to grow, and a good carpeting plant for a humid terrarium, as long as the soil never dries out.
Where it grows wild
A terrestrial lycophyte that creeps flat over wet soil. It grows in wet to damp meadows and fields, on stream and lake shores, in swamps and open woods, and in human-made habitats such as lawns and ditches. Its wetland status is facultative wetland, so it usually grows in wet ground. In Mexico, herbarium labels mention marshy grassland, pool edges by a dam, a waterfall and riverside vegetation.
Mainly lowland in the eastern USA. The Mexican records used for the climate span 860–2221 m. One record of 3874 m repeats a locality given elsewhere as 2221 m and is an error.
🔒 Growing it like that
The wild conditions above, turned into targets for a shelf, a tent or a greenhouse. The full profile has:
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Profiles are drafts built from measured range and climate and from published sources; each section carries its own confidence in the app. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, used under its CC BY-SA 3.0 licence, unmodified.