Thanks to Lionel Kelleway and all the team at the BBC’s now discontinued Natural History Radio program, I have developed a pronounced recent increase in awareness of and fascination with Bryophytes – mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. Living in Oregon as I do, the development of such an interest is, despite what sociologists or my beloved wife might say, quite normal. Given the abundance of moisture and cool temperatures here at the edge of the Pacific Coast Rainforest, the forests floors, trees, walls, and just about all other surfaces quickly turn into a Bryophyte wonderland if not cleared and maintained. Thus one could imagine my delight upon seeing in the dawn’s early light of my first full day on Jekyll Island, Georgia that the Live Oaks surrounding the Jekyll Island Club Hotel were absolutely strewn with long strands of some of the most profound-looking moss I had ever to that point seen – the famous Spanish-moss of literary and poetic fame.
However I was soon to discover that what I was seeing and standing agape in awe of, much to the curiosity and amusement of passers-by, is not a moss or even any type of Bryophyte at all. Spanish-moss, Tillandsia usneoides, despite its name, is actually in the family Bromeliaceae, the bromeliads. An epiphyte (a plant that lives harmlessly on other plants), Spanish-moss absorbs all the nutrients it needs directly from the air and from rainfall.
Despite it not being a moss, Spanish-moss draping the trees in profusion, as it was on Jekyll Island, is indeed a sight to see. Evocative of the great American literature depicting the southeastern United States, the cascades of grey-green bedecking the widely spreading branches of the Live Oaks lend a softness to the landscape as they sway gently in the afternoon breeze. They also cast eerie, neo-Gothic shadows in the night, especially under the light of a strong full moon. Though I have travelled in the American south many times over during the past decade, this is the first time I have received the visual experience I had every time expected during each previous visit. Truly it is a sight I shall long remember.
