Andrew's Moss Site (original) (raw)

The main part of this site is a collection of photographs of mosses. There are about 375 moss photos, and more are being added all the time.

Close up photographs of mosses Photos of mosses - Mossy landscapes Woodland Rocks Rivers Sphagnum bogs Mossy arts and crafts Mossy animals Key to identifying mosses Acknowledgements Links Multilingual Bryological Glossary

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Yesterday, we had an excursion to the woods next to the Oostereng arboretum just Northeast of Wageningen. We had beautiful weather with low autumn sunlight filtering through the leaves of the trees.

The most spectacular spots were the roots of old trees that had fallen some years ago and were now covered in various mosses. Because they are raised up above the ground, they are not covered in leaf litter, and the remaining soil around the dead roots keeps it nice and damp.

They not only had common species like the Polytrichum commune in the above photo, but also, for example, great swathes of _Pogonatum_in the lower area.They didn't have capsules, so we were not sure which species it was in the field. The dull blue-grey colour of the leaves was a dead give-away for it being some sort of Pogonatum in any case. Some of the leaves had been nibbled away by some small creature, which is quite unusual.

Next to the above tree stump, there were some rounded moss cushions on the ground. In the field, I didn't look so closely and thought they were Leucobryum. When I first moved to this area, about 30 years ago, that was not uncommon. However, these days you see it much less often, and indeed as soon as I saw the photo I realised that it was in fact a nice hummock of Dicranum scoparium with its distinctive curved leaves.

During the excursion, we saw two of the three Rhytidiadelphus_species. Of course, R. squarrosus is a common lawn species that you see all over the place. But we also saw R. loreus which was in fairly open, damp, youngish woodland. Both_R. loreus and R. triquetus are both quite uncommon, rare in some places, though apparently they are more common than they used to be due to improved woodland management practices. In the field we thought that the lower photo was triquetus, but it turned out not to me. However, later some people went back and did find that species growing nearby.


The damper places also had Kindbergia praelongum, which you often see, but it is always very attractive, with its finely branched leaves. Like Rhytidiadelphus, its stem leaves are much larger than the branch leaves. Here Atricum undulatum is growing through the Kindbergia and if you look carefully you can even see the undulations on its leaves.

Some of the trees had epiphytes growing onthem. That was mostly the ubiquitous Hynum cupressiforme, but there were also some more interesting patches, like the thallose liverwort_Metzgeria furcata._ Here, it was growing on the bark of a beech tree.
The rarest moss that we saw was probably Ptilium crista-castrensis. That is not only rare (round here at least, it is not uncommon in Northern Scotland), but exceptionally beautiful. The photo below doesn't really do it justice, as it i just one stem laid on the ground. That is because we did not want to disturb its habitat by the whole group trampling around it, so one of us plucked a few stems so that the rest of us, who stayed on the path, could admire it. When I got back, I discovered that I did not yet have a picture on this site (see here) , so that was a bonus.

All in all, it was a great excursion and the four hours flew by. If you live near Wageningen and would like to join, you can find out more here.More moss photos? Click here.

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