Natural Connections: Entrenched in surroundings — like drowned kitten moss

Keir Wefferling, a botanist from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, began picking his way over the gnarled trunks of fallen cedars and around black pools of unknown depth. Wefferling is among a group of about 20 professional and amateur botanists — and all of them followed him into a dark forest, not knowing what to expect. 

After only about 20 feet, Wefferling called out: “I can’t stand it! There’s incredible diversity right here, we have to stop!” 

We all gathered in a loose circle, shifting our feet to find solid ground among hummocks of rotten and less-rotten wood and mysterious wet hollows. Each of these surfaces was plush with a carpet of moss.

Keir, who specializes in moss, passed around tuft after tuft of green Dr. Seussian inventions. The scientific names he gave with each sample slipped through my brain in a fog of unspellable syllables. I admired each one eagerly, though, in awe of the kaleidoscope of leaf shapes, textures, patterns and colors. 

I was crouched down, admiring the round, glistening leaves of a unique moss sprinkled in a thick jumble across a small bowl between cedar roots — when Keir finally spoke words I recognized. 

“And here’s some spilled penny moss,” he said. I couldn’t even see the specimen he held up, but I knew he’d just named my lovely, shiny friend.

A few minutes later, from a different wet spot, Keir lifted another moss with a fun common name: drowned kitten moss. The scientific name of this one is Sphagnum cuspidatum, he said. For me, the sphagnum part is easy to remember: they’re common in bogs and fens. They have a particular look about them, with a fuzzy head of compact leaves, and then a long stem with drooping leaves. When they are all packed together in a mat, they look quite soft and inviting.

Drowned kitten moss is the exception. They grow in the lowest, wettest spots and look as bedraggled as their name suggests, especially when you lift them out of the water. Sad as they may appear, this is their preferred habitat — their happy place, if you will — with just the right mix of water, acid, nutrients, sun and shade. Their dust-like, windborne spores allow them to grow in wet spots around the world. They are found in Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Colombia and the Northeastern United States.

 It took a while for the group to make our way back out of this Northern Wisconsin cedar swamp. Northern white cedars grow where cold, clean groundwater flows horizontally near the soil surface, and plants often create quite a thicket. The trees have the advantage of not needing to travel through their own tangled habitat. We all held up forearms to guard our eyes against sharp twigs; several people put a leg through a rotting log; others cautiously found different routes; and then there were the mosses, and flowers and shrubs, and spiders and bumblebees to distract us as well.  

After supper, lovingly prepared by a team of Cable Natural History Museum volunteers, and served at the Gatehouse at the Forest Lodge Educational Campus where the course was based, we gathered in the Great Hall to look more closely at the moss samples collected from our field sites. 

Keir used a razor blade to cut tiny slices of moss leaves, then placed them onto a microscope slide. Once he brought the specimen into focus, I removed the microscope’s eyepiece and replaced it with a tiny camera hooked up to my computer. Instantly, the delicate line of leaf cells Keir had been looking at popped up on the big screen at the front of the room. We gasped in awe at the delicate beauty. 

A chain of clear, round cells was strung on a thread of green. The clear cells were dead, and their job was to soak up water. The green cells were full of chloroplasts, the photosynthesizing, sugar-producing organs of the mosses. 

We oohed and aahed at the macramé-like patterns of moss cells illuminated on the screen. For one species, we zoomed in, then zoomed in again with the microscope — until we could see that the cell walls were lined with tiny protrusions, like goosebumps on your skin

The interconnected mesh of moss cells was reminiscent of the bigger ecological web that these little beings inhabit. The glacial history shaped the landscape; our current cool, wet climate provides the water; and the cedar trees protect the mosses with their deep shade. Pools of water in between the cedars’ roots shape an even smaller landscape and microclimate.

Sometimes, the mind-boggling diversity of our world makes my brain feel like drowned kitten moss: disheveled from and entrenched in nature’s surroundings. More often, I feel like I’ve discovered a world glittering with uncountable pennies that some giant spilled across the landscape in a colossal bumble, sending the tiny treasures rolling into every nook, cranny, hummock, pool and inside every leaf of moss. Add up all these spilled pennies, and we find ourselves surrounded — by a wealth of wonder that we can barely stand.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.