Selaginella selaginoides

Lesser clubmoss

A tiny, creeping spikemoss of the northern hemisphere's cool, damp, open places: alpine flushes, base-rich fens, stream banks, wet ledges and dune slacks from the Arctic to the high mountains of Europe, Asia and North America. It needs cold winters, constant moisture and open light without competition. It is a genuinely difficult plant for a normal terrarium and is best suited to a cool alpine-bog set-up with a real winter.

Selaginella selaginoides — Photo: Len Worthington, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

At home, aim for

Day Cool-growingTargets in Plantistry

Night Close to the dayTargets in Plantistry

Humidity Humid airBand in Plantistry

Light Full sunDLI and PPFD in Plantistry

Expects a seasonal restGrows in the ground

Where it grows wild

It grows in damp, open places on neutral to base-rich soils: bogs and flushes, stream and lake shores, wet cliffs and ledges, short grassland and dune slacks. It competes poorly and disappears under tall, dense vegetation, so it grows among low mosses and sedges where light reaches the ground.

It grows from sea level in the Arctic, Scandinavia and Britain (up to 1,170 m there) to 600–2,900 m in North America, occasionally 3,800 m. The GBIF records span 250–3,435 m with a median of 2,128 m, a figure dominated by Alpine records.

Northern and central Europe, including the Alps, Pyrenees, Apennines, Carpathians and BalkansScandinavia, Iceland, the Faroes and GreenlandGreat Britain and IrelandCaucasusSiberia, the Russian Far East and JapanAlaska and CanadaNorthern and Rocky Mountain USA (Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, the Great Lakes states, Maine)

🔒 Growing it like that

The wild conditions above, turned into targets for a shelf, a tent or a greenhouse. The full profile has:

✓ Day and night temperature targets, and the limits it tolerates

✓ Humidity band, and how to hold it

✓ Light as DLI and PPFD for a grow light

✓ Wet and dry seasons, and whether to rest it

✓ Substrate and airflow

✓ A step-by-step setup to grow it like the wild

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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 2.0 licence, unmodified.