Spanish Moss is an flowering plant that often grows on
large trees in tropical and subtropical climates. It consists of one or
more slender stems, bearing alternate thin, curved or curly, and
heavily scaled leaves 2-6 cm long and 1 mm broad, that grow
vegetatively in a chain-like fashion, hanging, forming hanging
structures of up to 6 m. The plant has no aerial roots, and its brown,
green, yellow, or grey flowers are tiny and not prominent. It
propagates both by seed and vegetatively by fragments that are carried
by wind and stick to tree limbs or that are carried to other locations
by birds as nesting material. Spanish Moss is native to the American
continents. Spanish moss was introduced to Hawaii in the nineteenth
century. It became a popular ornamental and lei plant. On Hawaii it
often is called "Pele's hair" after Pele the Hawaiian goddess.
Identification credit: Amber Srivastava
Photographed in cultivation in Lucknow & BSI, Dehradun.
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The flower labeled Spanish Moss is ...