Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Primitive Tapestries
It's December. The leaves have fallen, the snow has had not, and the woods look gray and brown.
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| The view from the deck, Central Virginia |
A closer look, though, is rewarded. Nearly every tree has draped about its base a green tapestry, self-woven by mosses and lichens.
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| An especially varied example |
Even closer inspection changes the tapestry into miniature landscapes.
I'm no closer to knowing the names of these primitive plants and lichens than I was last winter, so you're own your own as to the IDs. I think for the time being, I'll just enjoy looking at them and not worry about their names.
I got a little carried away with the photographs and narrowed it down to just a few here, but the entire collection is in my December Picasa album.
8 Comments:
Funny, I'm always SO tickled when I find out that others are fascinated by mosses, lichens, club mosses, etc. One of the more annoying questions I get from readers of my columns is "How do I get rid of moss?" and I ask them WHY would you want to? I'm very fond of the little colonies of moss that are growing under our spruce trees by the woodland garden, and spend as much time admiring mosses and lichens as I do mushrooms (when the ground is dry and not snowcovered!)
Jodi: I went so far as to try to cultivate moss in our northern Virginia woods (moving little patches of it to the north side of trees) but it never really established - too dry there. Now in central Virgnia I have all I want and more. There's a couple of Lycopodium species there too, but I haven't posted anything about them lately.
Hi there, Entangled :-)
Now you are talking my language :-D
I live in Scotland and I too love to see moss and lichen on rocks and tree branches :-)
I think I will have to explore your blog more fully another night! It has just turned midnight as I write this so for tonight I will say goodnight :-D
Those are incredibly nice pictures of mosses and lichens. The structure of the moss is quite nice. I was amazed when a common moss bloomed (if that's what they do) last year. I hope it does it again this year as it was quite unexpected and lovely. I wish lichens would grow on the many rocks we hauled but no amount of keeping them wet or painting the rocks with yogurt seemed to work.
Shirl: Thanks for stopping by! I really enjoy your wildlife photos. I never realized the enormous diversity of moss until I started looking more closely at it.
Ki: Interesting that you mentioned moss blooming (sounds like as good a term as any to me). For positive ID, I'm told you need to examine the spore-bearing structure with a hand lens, but that got me wondering if the mosses bloom in specific seasons, or in response to weather, or what. I noticed capsules on some of the mosses I looked at, but they appeared to be past the stage where they'd be useful in identification.
WOW... what great pictures! Do you mind if I borrow one for my desktop this week? I could use seeing that lovely simple green now that we're officially in "grey season" here.
Blackswamp Girl: I'd be honored if my moss was on your desktop! If you're serious I can post a larger size - I almost always resize everything down to 800x600 for posting. I once thought about making some larger images available, but I didn't think anybody would be interested.
I really enjoy these too, thanks for such terrific pictures!
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