Sphagnum very important soil and topper for most carnivorous plants. In the 7th Framework Programme Mossclone peat mosses multiplied in moss bioreactors are developed as a new tool to monitor air pollution. Sphagnum is also used in air layering, a method of propagation used to propagate woody stems like guavas. A ball of Sphagnum is tied against a midway ringed bark of a branch still attached on the parent plant using a translucent plastic material (vitalon). Native Americans used peat moss as diaper material for their babies and is used to wick away the moisture and absorb the excrement from the
Moss Antarctica and Russia, and a case is put forwards for Carboniferous mosses. It has further been claimed that tube-like fossils from the Silurian are the macerated remains of moss calyptræ. Mosses also appear to evolve 2–3 times slower than ferns, gymnosperms and angiosperms. Recent research show that ancient moss could explain why the Ordovician ice ages occurred. When the ancestors of today's moss started to spread on land 470 million years ago, they absorbed CO from the atmosphere and extracted minerals by secreting organic acids that dissolved the rocks they were growing on. These chemically altered rocks in turn reacted