Oh, dear, it's been almost a month since I sat down at this computer to write a column. My creative muse has been goofing off for so long I've had trouble getting her back in gear. With the temperature close to 60 degrees, I decided to take a walk up through the pasture to see if something would inspire me. Almost everywhere I looked I saw moss - luxuriously smooth blankets of emerald velvet, miniature forests of tiny fir trees, sparkly stars of sphagnum in the wet places. There were pale green pincushions like fat lima beans poking up through the brown leaves, mats of fern-like mosses clinging to the rocks.
I'm not much of a photographer, but I snapped a dozens pictures, thinking I could write a column about all these great varieties of moss. When I got home I went looking for a book on mosses. My library contains dozens and dozens of books covering trees, shrubs, vines, flowers, ferns, lichens and lawns, but not a single one on mosses.
When I went on the Internet, all the websites on mosses were full of Latin names and scientific descriptions - gamctophytyes, bryophytes, chlorophyllous tissue, etc., not what I wanted at all. You would probably find that sort of information as tedius as I did. Discouraged, I was about to give up on this whole column when I suddenly remembered the eight volumes of The New Nature Library on my shelves. Not very new as it was published in 1905, but it contained just what I wanted, mosses with wonderful names like Thread Moss, Primative moss, Hairy-cap moss, Collar moss.
Common names for mosses usually indicate the shape of their sporophytes or spore cases. Mosses don't have seeds. Like ferns, they have minute spores, but this is definitely not the time of year when they are produced. Obviously I should have written this column in the summer when these clever capsules appear. With no sporeophytes to study, I decided that putting names to various species would be impossible. There was one exception, however, the sphagnum, or peat moss.
There are over 14,000 vrieties
of s;hagnum, but here's one of the
most common. It can hold 20 to
30 times its weight in water. Be-
it is anticeptic, it was used as
surgical dressings during WW1.
Eskimos used it to line babies'
cradles and to cure diaper rash.
Florists use it to pack around
plants for shipping. Dead sphag-
num turns into peat, used as a
fertilizer or mulch, and also
burned as fuel.
I decided not to attempt to properly identify the mosses in my other photographs, but I have my own common names for the ones below. That first one I call pin-cushion moss. It's the only one in pastel green. The middle photo is of the moss that looks like a forest of fir trees. It forms thick carpets as its stems are more than two inches high and make a great place to spread your blanket for a picnic. The photo on the far left I call fern moss because its stems look just like tiny ferns. It grows on rocks and logs and its rhizomes (roots) can be peeled off with ease. It makes the perfect moss to use in a terrarium, staying green for weeks.
The cracks in my front terrace have filled in with moss, which delights me, but I had nothing to do with it. I've read that if you collect the spore cases of a moss, mix them with buttermilk and spread the mixture in an area you will soon have moss, but I've never tried it. If you want something small and attractive to grow between flagstones, an alternative is to plant one of the dozens of varieties of thyme.
We don't seem to be getting any
snow for cross-country skiing this winter,
but if you take a woodland walk instead, you
can probably find all the mosses from this
column still lush and green.
