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Mosses and Lichens at Home — Part 2

Nature distributes the mosses lavishly in all humid climates, regardless of altitude, cold or heat. They are found on trees living or dead, on earth or on rock, in streams and on the land.

"The orange stain, which is time's finger mark on the gray wall, and the cups with scarlet edges spread for fairy banquets--the soft green beds into which our feet sink, and all the loveliness which we think of when we think of--mosses."--Ruskin.

Who has not loved the mossy banks and the little velvet cushions which cling to the plaster of the old wall (Colour Plate IV) or spring up in the crevices of the pavement, giving restful spots of green to the dreary monotony of brick and stone? Children play with mosses and lichens. Poets sing their charms. Artists endeavour to reproduce their wonderful colours traced on bark and rock.

Aside from their artistic charm, mosses and lichens have other charms for all who will pause awhile to study their habits, and for all who will linger long enough to make out what the plants are doing in their humble way. They have wonderful mechanical contrivances for the physicist, curious processes of interest to the chemist, and many suggestions for the philosopher.

Go into the woods and pastures after a rain. You will find a beauty and loveliness on rocks and trees and fallen logs which were not even suggested on a dry sunshiny day. The wood is in her glory at such times, and everyone who once sees her in her splendour will visit her again.

"Here are cool mosses deep,

and thro' the moss the ivies creep."

Tennyson--The Lotos Eaters: Choric song.

The habit the mosses and lichens have of changing form and colour is one full of interest. The crisp gray moss cushions, which quickly turn green in the rain, must excite curiosity (Colour Plate IV). Pause awhile by a fresh green bank of Hairy-caps (Colour Plate X) wet with dew, and as the sun comes out and shines upon the little plants, watch them shrink away, changing the fresh bank into one brown and bare. Watch them again in a rain or when the evening dew is falling, to see every apparently dead brown plant revive and become green as before. The cause of the change is easily seen by one looking closely. The plant does not die when the sun shines, it simply folds the edges of its leaves together and turns them up against the stem so that their horny tips, instead of their delicate leaf surfaces, are presented to the sun.

The cause of the upturning of the leaves of the Hairy-caps, the change of colour of many mosses and lichens from gray to green, the methods by which they subsist on bare and barren rocks and soils, and endure extreme and sudden changes in the dryness and humidity of the air, are all interesting questions to be answered by the microscope, together with careful observations in the field.

Gray or crimson Bog-mosses,steadily working their way over swamps and ponds, preparing a foothold for larger plants, illustrate to us how the great peat-bogs of Ireland and of other parts of world were made.

Whether one study the mosses and lichens for their natural beauty, for their habits, or from a botanical standpoint, they are interesting. They are true lovers of fresh air and clear running water, beautiful creatures in beautiful homes. They are beautiful even when dried and pressed for the herbarium, so that one with a taste for collecting may regard the artistic as well as the useful.

The wide distribution of the mosses and lichens and their power of enduring great cold renders them available for study at all times of the year. They are reported to have been found in all parts of the globe.

Dr. Isaac I. Hayes who in 1854 discovered Grinnell Land, tells of finding "moss" as far north as Booth Bay in Greenland, in Latitude 76 degree. 30'. The uses to which the moss was put in their distress were varied. After improvising a hut from a crevice in the rock by filling open places with loose stones pried from the frozen ground, they made a roof of sails and thatched it a foot thick with "moss" dug with their tin dinner plates from under two feet of snow. All cracks were closed with the moss, and tapers of "moss" dipped in oil were depended upon to light their dismal quarters.

The habit of using moss for filling in chinks and cracks is a common one among all pioneers, as one may see by observing the log huts in newly opened districts, for mixed with clay it forms a useful cement. This art is not known alone to man.

"Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush

That overhung a molehill large and round,

I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush

Sing hymns of rapture, while I drank the

Sound with joy--and oft an unintruding guest,

I watched her secret toils from day to day;

How true she warped the moss to form her nest,

And modell'd it within with wood and clay."

Claire--The Thrush's Nest.