Tortula ruralis is a species of moss

Moss

Mosses are small, soft plants that are typically 1–10 cm tall, though some species are much larger. They commonly grow close together in clumps or mats in damp or shady locations. They do not have flowers or seeds, and their simple leaves cover the thin wiry stems...

. Common names include twisted moss and star moss. This moss has a cosmopolitan distribution

Cosmopolitan distribution

In biogeography, a taxon is said to have a cosmopolitan distribution if its range extends across all or most of the world in appropriate habitats. For instance, the killer whale has a cosmopolitan distribution, extending over most of the world's oceans. Other examples include humans, the lichen...

, occurring in North America, the Pacific, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, North and South Africa, South America, and Australia. It grows in many types of climate

Climate

Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...

, including the Arctic

Arctic

The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...

, boreal

Boreal ecosystem

The term boreal is usually applied to ecosystems localized in subarctic and subantarctic zones, although Austral is also used for the latter....

 areas, temperate areas, and desert

Desert

A desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Most deserts have an average annual precipitation of less than...

s. It grows on tundra

Tundra

In physical geography, tundra is a biome where the tree growth is hindered by low temperatures and short growing seasons. The term tundra comes through Russian тундра from the Kildin Sami word tūndâr "uplands," "treeless mountain tract." There are three types of tundra: Arctic tundra, alpine...

s, coniferous forests, grassland

Grassland

Grasslands are areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses and other herbaceous plants . However, sedge and rush families can also be found. Grasslands occur naturally on all continents except Antarctica...

s, sagebrush

Sagebrush

Sagebrush is a common name of a number of shrubby plant species in the genus Artemisia native to western North America;Or, the sagebrush steppe ecoregion, having one or more kinds of sagebrush, bunchgrasses and others;...

, and other habitat types.

This moss forms tufts of erect stems up to 4 centimeters tall. When it is wet it is bright green and the leaves are loose. When it dries the leaves wrap around the stem and it becomes reddish brown in color. It is dioecious

Dioecious

Dioecy is the property of a group of biological organisms that have males and females, but not members that have organs of both sexes at the same time. I.e., those whose individual members can usually produce only one type of gamete; each individual organism is thus distinctly female or male...

. It also performs vegetative reproduction

Vegetative reproduction

Vegetative reproduction is a form of asexual reproduction in plants. It is a process by which new individuals arise without production of seeds or spores...

.

Though it occurs in many types of habitat, it is usually not a dominant species

Dominance (ecology)

Ecological dominance is the degree to which a species is more numerous than its competitors in an ecological community, or makes up more of the biomass...

. The moss grows on many types of soil, but most often calcareous

Calcium

Calcium is the chemical element with the symbol Ca and atomic number 20. It has an atomic mass of 40.078 amu. Calcium is a soft gray alkaline earth metal, and is the fifth-most-abundant element by mass in the Earth's crust...

 soils. It tolerates a variety of elevation

Elevation

The elevation of a geographic location is its height above a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface ....

s and levels of sunlight. It may be a component in cryptogamic crusts

Cryptobiotic soil

A Cryptobiotic soil is a biological soil crust composed of living cyanobacteria, green algae, brown algae, fungi, lichens, and/or mosses. Commonly found in arid regions around the world, cryptobiotic soils go by many names, including cryptogamic, microbiotic, or microphytic soils or crusts...

. It helps to stabilize soil and reduce erosion

Erosion

Erosion is when materials are removed from the surface and changed into something else. It only works by hydraulic actions and transport of solids in the natural environment, and leads to the deposition of these materials elsewhere...

. It can dry out and become dormant for many years, becoming metabolically active again after many decades of desiccation

Desiccation

Desiccation is the state of extreme dryness, or the process of extreme drying. A desiccant is a hygroscopic substance that induces or sustains such a state in its local vicinity in a moderately sealed container.-Science:...

. It is used as a model organism

Model organism

A model organism is a non-human species that is extensively studied to understand particular biological phenomena, with the expectation that discoveries made in the organism model will provide insight into the workings of other organisms. Model organisms are in vivo models and are widely used to...

in studies of desiccation.