Sphagnum short-lived, and consists almost entirely of a shiny green, spherical spore capsule that becomes black with spores. Sporophytes are raised on stalks to facilitate spore dispersal, but unlike other mosses, "Sphagnum" stalks are produced by the maternal gametophyte. Tetrahedral haploid spores are produced in the sporophyte by meiosis, which are then dispersed when the capsule explosively discharges its cap, called an operculum, and shoots the spores some distance. The spores germinate to produce minute protonemae, which start as filaments, can become thalloid, and can produce a few rhizoids. Soon afterwards, the protonema develops buds and these differentiate into its characteristic,
Type (biology) species of the section ... After studying the diverse forms, I came to consider them as belonging to the one and the same specific type. In botanical nomenclature, a "type" ("typus", "nomenclatural type"), "is that element to which the name of a taxon is permanently attached." (article 7.1) In botany a type is either a specimen or an illustration. A specimen is a real plant (or one or more parts of a plant or a lot of small plants), dead and kept safe, "curated", in a herbarium (or the equivalent for fungi). Examples of where an illustration may serve as