Monday, Feb. 27, 2006 | 7:37 a.m.
After spending years crouching under rocks and kneeling on hillsides studying Nevada's most obscure species - moss - Lloyd Stark and James Shevock have learned quite a few things about the rare plant.
Including what it takes to turn moss on.
"Conditions have to be perfect for moss to have sex," Shevock said.
In that regard, maybe moss isn't so different from the rest of us. The right lighting can set the mood, and something to drink up helps, too. Looks aren't all that important - a good thing, given that one amateur researcher says the average moss resembles "a tarantula walking around without legs."
But even when everything's right, it's still tough for boy and girl mosses to get together.
A male moss's sperm must travel through water to impregnate a female. If there's not enough rain, the female will abort her eggs to save herself, said Shevock, a botany expert at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and one of Stark's moss-hunting colleagues.
"They (mosses) try a lot, but they're not very successful," he said.
Maybe they just need the right pick-up line - something like, "C'mon, baby, give me a chance - I'll grow on you."
Despite the reproductive problems, moss is hanging in there in the eco-chain, aided by a hardy constitution that, despite its lack of roots, leaves or stems, enables it to survive in desert shade.
In more than 10 years of searching, Stark and Shevock have identified about 250 distinct moss species in Nevada.
The scientists, part of a small team of rare plant enthusiasts, named their effort the Nevada Moss Collecting Initiative - and insist it's nowhere near complete.
"People are just starting to realize that we're dealing with something special," said Stark, a UNLV biology professor.
"If the rare ones go, I think we lose something."
Guided by squinting precision to locate moss samples in the desert - and with a trusty pair of tweezers to cleanly clip them - Stark is determined not to see that happen.
Many of Nevada's mosses are considered among the world's rarest plants, Stark said. One variety, the Entosthodon planoconvexus, has been established in only two places on Earth: Nevada and Egypt.
While there may be more than 400 types of moss across Nevada, the state stands to lose species faster than anyone can find them, Stark said.
Development, shifting climates and a natural habitat increasingly encroached upon are cutting into Nevada's moss population, Stark said.
Of 78 plants and animals listed as threatened under the Clark County Multiple Species Habitat Protection Plan, four are mosses.
The plan mandates that developers building projects on local land must pay $550 per acre - money that conservation agencies will use to protect any of the listed species, including mosses, should they ever be ruled at risk, said Clark County Desert Conservation Program administrator Marcie Henson.
Revenue from the plan has generated $38 million for conservation studies, $30,000 of which Stark received to research rare moss, Henson said.
The professor's research - and moss' existence - sometimes is at odds with Valley life.
People have driven ATVs through moss study sights and grazing cows have hoofed through unexplored tracts of land, destroying specimens.
Mosses, which sexually reproduce, already face an upward battle when it comes to procreating in the desert, Shevock said. Without water, the plants will not reproduce.
Nevada mosses have broken records to survive. The plant can go 10 years without water and live, Shevock said.
"They go dormant," he said. "They're not dead. They just wait it out."
One variety of moss lasted 30 minutes in a 240-degree oven and came out alive, Stark said.
"We gave them kind of a torture test," Stark said. "They just sit there and take it."
To speed up the collection process, Shevock and Stark began soliciting moss donations through the mail about five years ago.
Since then, they have received hundreds of samples, Shevock said.
Oyvind Frock, a Reno retiree, has sent in about 90 specimens gathered during four years of hikes.
"They're easy to spot once you get your eyes trained to them," Frock said. "They're kind of a dull brown, like a tarantula walking around without legs."
In recent years, Nevada moss hunters have discovered three species unknown to science. Stark and a student discovered one of the unknown mosses just outside Las Vegas.
"It's kind of an acquired taste," he said. "But there's a beauty under the microscope that's grabbed me," Stark said.
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