Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

The Forest Gives Thanks to the Mosses

The Forest Gives Thanks to the Mosses  141 The Forest Gives Thanks to the Mosses  F rom the windswept silence of Marys Peak, you can see the struggle unfolding. The land that stretches to the ocean, sparkling seventy miles distant, is broken into fragments. Patches of red earth, smooth blue green slopes, polygons of bright yellow green and amorphous dark green ribbons sit uneasily side by side. The Oregon Coast Range is a patchwork of clear-cuts and the second and third generations of Douglas-fir coming back with a vengeance. The landscape mosaic also includes a few scattered remnants of the original forest, the old growth that once stretched from the Willamette Valley to the sea. The landscape spread out before me looks more like ragged scraps than a patterned quilt. It looks like indecision as to what we want our forests to be. The conifer forests of the Northwest are renowned for their abundance of moisture. The temperate rain forests of western Oregon receive as much as 120 inches of rain a year. The mild rainy winters let trees grow all year round and, with them, their mosses. Every surface in a temperate rain forest is covered with moss. Stumps and logs, the entire forest floor is greened with wildly tangled turfs of Rhytidiadelphus and translucent clumps of Plagiomnium. The tree trunks are feathered with plumes of Dendroalsia like the breast of a great green parrot. Vine maple shrubs arch over under the weight of curtains of Neckera and Isothecium two feet long. I can’t help it, my heart beats faster when I come into these woods. Perhaps there is some intoxicating element in moss-breathed air, transmuted in its passage through glistening leaves. Indigenous people of these forests, and all over the world, offer traditional prayers of thanksgiving which acknowledge the roles of fish and trees, sun and rain, in the well-being of the world. Each being with whom our lives are intertwined is named and thanked. When I say my morning thanks, I listen a moment for a reply. I’ve often wondered if the land any longer has reason to return gratitude toward humans. If forests 142  Gathering Moss did offer prayers, I suspect they would send thanks to the mosses. The beauty of mosses in these forests is much more than visual. They are integral to the function of the forest. Mosses not only flourish in the humidity of a temperate rain forest, they play a vital role in creating it. When rainfall meets a forest canopy, its potential routes to the ground below are many. Very little precipitation actually falls directly to the forest floor. I’ve stood in a forest during a downpour and been as dry as if I had been holding an umbrella. The raindrops are intercepted by the leaves, where they slide off toward the twigs. At a junction, two drips meet and then two more, forming tiny rivulets at the confluence of branches. Like tributaries of an arboreal river, all flow toward the stream running down the trunk of the tree. Foresters call this water coursing down the tree “stemflow.” “Throughfall” is the name for water which drips from branches and leaves. I like to pull up my hood and stand close to a tree trunk in a rainstorm and watch the progress of the flood. The first droplets sink into the bark like rain into thirsty soil, the corky layers absorbing moisture. Then the gullies of the bark are filled to overflowing, until the water leaves their banks and sheets over the entire surface. Miniature Niagaras form over ledges in the bark, sweeping bits of lichen and helpless mites in the torrent. Passing over twig and branch it picks up sediment along the way. Dust, insect frass, microscopic debris, all are swept along, dissolving in the water so that stemflow is far richer in nutrients than the pure rainwater from which it began. In effect, the rain washes the trees and carries the bathwater straight to the waiting roots. This recycling of nutrients from the rinsed bark to the soil keeps the valuable nutrients in the tree and prevents their loss from the forest floor. The soil gives thanks to the mosses. Like pillowy sandbags set in the way of a river, the clumps of moss also slow the passage of rain down the trunk of a tree. As water flows Neckera pennata, an epiphytic moss [18.222.119.148] Project MUSE (2024-04-26...