The Peat Moss

A genetic study of peat moss, Sphagnum, in North America resulted in quite a surprise. It's all one genetic individual. That's right, we're not talking about 1 species, but 1 individual. This suggests that a single colonizing peat moss cloned itself and spread across the whole continent! This is pretty weird, not clones per se, which are pretty common and long lived in the world of plants, but just one peat moss everywhere you look anywhere in North America. That sort of boggles the mind. Wonder how many times you check your results when everything keeps coming out identical? You'd begin to think maybe somebody in the lab made a mistake.