Club mosses produce a group of structurally related secondary metabolites, the lycopodium alkaloids.
In spite of the widespread use of club mosses in early folk medicine, the immunomodulatory activities of their secondary metabolites have not been much studied, with the exception of huperzine A.
As club mosses from the Lycopodiaceae family have been used in folk medicine for wound healing and treatment of swelling, we were interested in examining the immunomodulatory effects of one of the secondary metabolites originating from club mosses, i.
These tropical wetlands were instead mainly dominated by plants such as ferns and horsetails, and most significantly giant club mosses.
These large club mosses had an unusual biology, making the coal swamps a strange and special habitat.
Their fast, determinate growth meant the giant club mosses generated enormous quantities of peat.
Flowering species were latecomers to the world of vascular plants, a group that includes ferns, club mosses
today are small moss-like vascular plants that grow close to the ground.
Actually Pteridophytes includes ferns, club mosses
(one of the main plants to form coal millions of years ago) and horsetails (one of our most pernicious weeds) but here I am concerned only with the ferns.
Like the true mosses, they reproduce from spores instead of seeds, but the club mosses
have what might be considered a vital improvement for life on land: decent plumbing.