Leucobryum glaucum (Hedw.) Ångstr.

Pincushion moss (Leucobryum glaucum) is a green moss forming dense cushions 12 mm to 12.5 cm tall from the Dicranaceae family, distributed in eastern North America and Europe. This plant serves as a bioindicator of environmental quality due to its responsiveness to heavy metal ions and pollutants. Pincushion moss is also popular as a decorative plant in terrariums and aquariums, with pharmacological activity including antimicrobial and antitumor effects.

This moss habitat grows in clusters on soil substrate, decaying wood, and rock edges. In Illinois, its habitat includes rocky forest ground, shaded hillsides, wooded cliffs and ridges, decaying pine logs in sandy savannas, sandstone cliffs and ledges, sandstone walls along rivers, cemeteries, slightly shaded ground in city parks, and clay along roadsides, but it is most often found in moist forests and swamps because it requires much shade and water. Although this moss usually appears in high-quality natural areas, it is sometimes also seen in disturbed habitats. This moss favors shaded to partially shaded areas and moist soil, and will spread around itself as long as it has the shade and moisture needed to live. This moss also favors acidic soil containing humus, clay, sand, gravel, or rocky material, and can tolerate drier conditions than most mosses. In favorable locations, the moss can be long-lived, forming fairly large plant cushions.

• Roots fibrous rhizoids (false roots) for anchoring it to the underlying substrate.
• Stem 1-12 cm long, pale green (turning brown with age), glaucous (waxy leaf surface), and terete, sometimes branching dichotomously.
• Leaves alternate (left-right) from the base to the tip of the stem, growing densely, shiny light green, lanceolate shaped, entire margins, base blunt and apex pointed, curving upward along both sides of its broad sheath, becoming curved and semi-tubular shaped along the outer two-thirds of its length, leaf surface smooth. Leaves form overlapping pseudowhorls along the stem, ascending and clasping the stem at the base. Dioecious, where male reproductive organs and female reproductive organs are located on separate plants. Male plants often appear above female plants in a dwarf form. In unusual cases, fertile female plants produce solitary sporophytes. Each sporophyte consists of a spore-bearing capsule on a slender stalk (seta). The seta of this moss is usually 8-18 mm, long, reddish, and more or less upright. The capsule body has a curved ellipsoid-cylindrical shape, tapering at the base, elongated and red to reddish brown when mature. This capsule body has an operculum 1.5-2 mm long and long-beaked shaped. A thin membranous calyptra covers the capsule body and its operculum, though the calyptra later breaks and falls to the ground.

Propagation occurs asexually when its dry leaves break off due to disturbance. With moist medium conditions, the leaf is able to form fibrous rhizoids and begin developing a new clonal plant.

Essential oil (thujopsadiene, β-curcumene, cedrol, cis-isolongifolene, terpenes/terpenoids, aliphatic hydrocarbons, aldehydes, ketones).

Has antimicrobial, antibacterial, antitumor, and antiseptic activity.

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