Loading…
26
I thought moss was just green carpet until a guy at the Portland botanical garden showed me what was living in it
I used to walk right past moss on every hike and think it was all the same fuzzy green stuff. Last Saturday I went to the botanical garden in Portland for their free moss walk, mostly because my sister dragged me along and it was raining anyway. The guy leading it, Dale, had a little 10x hand lens and he pulled me over to a rock wall and said look through this. I swear there were tiny little star shaped leaves and little stalks with capsules on top that looked like tiny bird feeders. He called them sporophytes and said one square foot of moss can hold more species than I could count on two hands. I stood there in the drizzle for like 20 minutes just staring at a wall I would have ignored my whole life. So now I carry a cheap jeweler's loupe in my jacket pocket and I flip over logs way more than my hiking buddies would like. Dale also said moss soaks up water like a sponge and holds the soil together on slopes, which honestly made me feel dumb for ever thinking it was just decoration. Does anyone here have a good pocket guide for telling mosses apart, or do I just need to keep bugging the local native plant club?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
sean85420d ago
You ever try iNaturalist for moss ID?
5