WIND superhighways have helped carry plants thousands of kilometres across the southern hemisphere, seeding new communities on the islands and continents of South America, southern Africa and Australasia.
Similar ferns, mosses, lichens and liverworts grow in all these regions, which were part of the supercontinent Gondwana before it broke up around 130 million years ago. One explanation for the similarities is that the plants have evolved little from their Gondwana-dwelling ancestors. But Jesús Muñoz at the Royal Botanic Garden in Madrid, Spain, and his team say it is more likely that the plants were dispersed by the wind long after…
