It can use the water-conserving strategy of crassulacean acid metabolism for photosynthesis. While its presence rarely kills the trees on which it grows, it occasionally becomes so thick that, by shading the leaves of the tree, it slows the growth rate of the tree. Spanish moss is not parasitic: it is an epiphyte that absorbs nutrients and water through its own leaves from the air and rain falling upon it. Spanish moss growing along the limb of a tree It has been introduced to locations around the world with similar conditions, including Hawaii, where it first established itself in the nineteenth century. The northern limit of its natural range is Northampton County, Virginia, with colonial-era reports of it in southern Maryland, where no populations are now known to exist. In North America, it occurs in a broad band following the Gulf of Mexico and the southern Atlantic coast. Virgin Islands) through Argentina, where the climate is warm enough and a relatively high average humidity occurs. Spanish moss' primary range is in the southeastern United States (including Puerto Rico and the U.S.

The specific name of the plant, usneoides, means 'resembling Usnea', a lichen. Formerly, it was placed in the genera Anoplophytum, Caraguata, and Renealmia. Spanish moss is in the family Bromeliaceae (the bromeliads). Spanish moss propagates both by seed and vegetatively by fragments that are carried on the wind and stick to tree limbs or that are carried to other locations by birds as nesting material. The scape is partly hidden within the leaf sheath.

Its flowers are yellow-green and small, with spreading petals.

Spanish moss consists of one or more slender stems, bearing alternate thin, curved or curly, and heavily scaled leaves 2–6 cm (0.8–2.4 inches) long and 1 mm (0.04 inches) broad, that grow vegetatively in a chain-like fashion (pendant), forming hanging structures of up to 6 m (20 feet).

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