Plants of the Mosses

Only a small number of specialist bog plants and animals can tolerate the acidic and nutrient-poor conditions of the rainwater-fed raised bog dome.

 

 

 

 

92 species of mosses and liverworts can be found on the Mosses including rare wavy forked moss and rare golden bogmoss, here is one of the 13 types of Sphagnum.

Scarce bog rosemary, a true raised bog dweller, thrives on the Mosses. On Fenn's Moss, cloudberry grows and at Wem Moss, great and oblong-leaved sundew survive.

 

 

 

 

Pools with floating feathery bogmoss turn white in spring with fluffy flowers of red-leaved common cotton sedge and green needle-leaved hare's-tail cotton sedge. In deep pools, the once common yellow-flowered lesser bladderwort supplements its rainwater diet with water fleas.

On old hand-cuts, relict lawns of chunky bright-green papillose bogmoss, russet Magellanic bogmoss, tiny pink-flowered cranberry, golden-flowered bog asphodel, tiny bead-flowered white-beaked sedge and glistening insect-eating round-leaved sundew tell of better days.

 

 

On low hummocks spot the delicate red bogmoss, and grey-green cross-leaved heath, whose pretty bell-shaped flowers colour the Mosses pink in June. August then sees dark-green heather turning dry peat purple. 

Bracken and birch give glowing autumn hues to dried-out areas, and swathes of purple moor-grass bleach the winter landscape white.