Selaginella watsonii
Selaginella watsonii (Watson's spikemoss) is a mat-forming spikemoss of rocky, high-mountain habitats in the western United States, most often in the Sierra Nevada and Great Basin ranges. It forms low cushions of short, forking stems in granite and dolomite crevices at about 2,100–3,400 m, where it is buried under snow in winter and baked by strong sun in summer. It is not a tropical terrarium plant: it needs a cold winter rest, intense light and a very free-draining rocky mix, and is best treated as an alpine trough or crevice-garden plant.
Where it grows wild
Rock crevices, cliff edges, outcrops, talus and thin gravelly soil on granite, dolomite and limestone. It grows in subalpine pinyon, limber pine, whitebark pine and Engelmann spruce woodland and up into alpine fellfield and turf, on both sheltered north slopes and exposed ridges.
Herbarium specimens with altitudes run from about 2,100 m (7,000 ft) in Utah and Nevada to about 3,400 m (11,150 ft) in the California Sierra Nevada. It is a subalpine to alpine species.
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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.