Moss, uses thereof ?

[Toddy]

Useful stuff is moss, and there's a lot of it around in some places.

Sphagnum is particularly useful, being soft, moist, and absorbent, and pretty much sterile of anything that'd do us a mischief. Dries well, packs safely, doesn't stink...good stuff.

What other uses though ?

Our roof drops masses after every dry spell followed by heavy rain, and I've been using it to line hanging baskets for years. It just kind of occurred to me that I'd never tried doing anything much else with it though.
The trees along side the high fence are covered with moss too, not the same stuff as the peat bog variety, but still green, and a lot of it. One of the ponds constantly overflows and the grass there is more moss than grass. More environmentally friendly to burn that tumbledryer lint I suppose.

M

 

[Broch]

There are the obvious uses of course - dried for tinder, shelter cover, water filtering.

The Native American Ethnobiology Database doesn't list a lot of uses but includes: (depending on species) mixing with clay to fill gaps in wooden dwellings; fertilizer; medicinal use for fever, rheumatism, colic; food and mattress stuffing.

 

[Janne]

Push into cracks in log houses as filler and insulation ( cover then with clay before tarring the house)

Dig into hard compact soil as soil improver

Arrange around your scandinavian christmas table lights and ornaments

Vital ingredient in your outdoor hanging baskets

Do you also grow Reindeer Lichen?

 

[Toddy]

I don't know how the clay and moss would do in our sodden bit of the world. I know that further south it has a long provenance as daub though.

Funnily enough I was watching a video of Shawn James building his cabin in Canada (a friend sent a link) and he has used the moss and clay to fill the gaps where his logs sit together...he said something about not having it go right through. I cannot mind now, I'd need to watch again, but at the time I thought of it as like cavity wall insulation when it works, and instead he said that it could act as a major heat loss to the outside. Then again, he's in Canada, and he has temperatures like RobsonValley endures.

Not sure about reindeer lichen here, Janne. I'm pretty sure it's not a commercial crop though, and we don't have vast arctic tundra type areas anyway....not well drained, open ones I mean. Even the top of our hills are sodden wet. That's probably why the sphagnum thrives so well.
The reindeer moss I bought to use for railway modelling had been glycerined and it came from Finland.

M

 

[Janne]

I have seen cabin building programmes where they place a flexible thin layer between the logs to close the space ( which will change when logs dry out more) then after wall is finished they did the same but mixed with clay inside, and mixd with tar outside.

The moss will act to fluff up the heavy clay coil.

If you should find reindeer moss ( Scotland?) take some.
Boil it for a genuine Same ‘veg’ experience!
(It tastes crap imo)

You might find some natural reindeer moss before X-mas in IKEA. Better to decorate with, you just soak it if to dry.

 

[Robson Valley]

There's a substantial difference between "log cabins" and "log homes."
Mostly the care in proper scribing big logs so that they actually fit together and "sit down" tightly.
Might cost you $5 - $10 mega bucks for a real house. Anywhere on Earth.

I have lived for some months in each. The clay is a noble thought but rarely ever happened.
The log cabins on Nipew (The Lake of the Dead) were just chinked with enormous quantities of boreal mosses.
That kept out the wind, the flies and the mosquitoes but had no impact on the mice or the ants.

The living mosses near my village form enormous wetlands, one of which (natural) serves as a water treatment conditioner
for our village system. The other one is artificial (planted) as a part of our zero discharge waste water treatment system.

 

[Janne]

I described the building of a log house ( to be lived in full time). Heated most of the year.
I guess a log cabin ( inhabited and heated for short period of time occacionly) the logs do not dry out as much and warp and shrink ?

In fact, my father in law built a log ‘house’ about 10 years ago. Despite 2 years outdoor drying, the logs shrank and twisted, the whole house had to be re packed. They used modern materials though, similar to what is used in boat building.

 

[Toddy]

Ehm, I'll find the link to Shawn's video, but his cabin was built from fresh felled trees and it seems very sound.

I must admit it surprised me because the wooden homes that I know of are very European and they cut and shape the logs and then they're often faced with an outer layer of planking too, but Shawn's seems to work despite no 'seating of the logs, just one on top of t'other, and no real dovetailing (I'm not sure if that's the right word when building joints on houses).

It was another video, someone linked to it from here, iirc, about the Northmen building a house, and another about a fellow in Latvia. Both were beautiful buildings

I'll find the links.

M

 

[Toddy]

Shawn James....
https://myselfreliance.com
and there's a video showing his cabin and it's heat loss, the moss question, etc.,

and the Latvian one, where Jacob built his home, is found here

on this site there's also a French carpenter building too.
https://www.youtube.com/user/neemantools/videos

I'm struggling to sort out the links that post these videos here. The aim is to watch onsite, but I'm not sure if it's working properly or not. Apologies to anyone else whom I have pulled up about this; you're quite right, it's not as simple as it seems. That last link just will not comply

 

[Bishop]

Sphagnum moss saw service in WW1 as a wound dressing and works well in a pinch for cushioning blisters on your toes.

 

[Macaroon]

The mosses are great conditioners of compost heaps and bins and are especially good for these no-turn dalek type jobbies; they also make the heaps much more forgiving with, for example, large amounts of stuff like grass clippings and keep the heaps from becoming stale and claggy from not being turned over enough.

 

[Sundowner]

If you're talking cabin building I still subscribe to Dick Proenneke's way. Haven't got a link as I'm at work but can easily be found on YouTube. Mind you, he left his logs lying to dry for a year. I think he used moss for the roof

 

[santaman2000]

I don't know how the clay and moss would do in our sodden bit of the world. I know that further south it has a long provenance as daub though.....

It was commonly used here (we have a very, very, very rainy climate) in the South back before the mid 20th century.

 

[santaman2000]

.... The clay is a noble thought but rarely ever happened.
The log cabins on Nipew (The Lake of the Dead) were just chinked with enormous quantities of boreal mosses.....

Down here they were just chinked with clay when it was available (which was usually) and mud if clay wasn't available.

 

[santaman2000]

We have loads of different mosses here but the one most often "used" back in the day (Native American and colonial periods) was Spanish Moss, also known locally as "grandaddy greybeard."

It's a native moss that was and is prolific. It's been used as mattress stuffing, tinder, and as the filler with clay to make bricks.

 

[daveO]

The mosses are great conditioners of compost heaps and bins and are especially good for these no-turn dalek type jobbies; they also make the heaps much more forgiving with, for example, large amounts of stuff like grass clippings and keep the heaps from becoming stale and claggy from not being turned over enough.

This is what I do with all the moss the jackdaws throw off my roof. i try and keep my heaps turned though so I'm not sure if I get any benefit from it.

Our oriental cousins love moss for gardening though. They can buy potted cultivars of different mosses in garden centres like we buy bedding plants. It's not a style of gardening we see a lot over here but can look great if you have the right conditions. I've seen some really nice green roofs put on sheds and things using moss. I've got a light green spreading variety that does really well in the stone wall I've built in my garden. The birds love it for nesting material in the spring. I've also got star moss growing in the stones around my pond and that's a really attractive variety for the garden.

 

[bearbait]

No joke but I've found sphagnum moss to be the best 'toilet paper'. Just the right amount of abrasion and moisture for a clean and fresh finish.

 

[Robson Valley]

Many species, many different names, many uses as described by Haida native elders.

kiits'ixang = to poke moss into cracks in a cabin.
k'inxaan gang.'ah = a thick cushion of moss out on the muskeg, like Sphagnum.

One use for Sphagnum, for example, is to soak in water, throw on the fire and use as a source
of steam heat for making bent wood boxes. Yes, the boxes are so good they are waterproof.

 

[daveO]

We have loads of different mosses here but the one most often "used" back in the day (Native American and colonial periods) was Spanish Moss, also known locally as "grandaddy greybeard."

It's a native moss that was and is prolific. It's been used as mattress stuffing, tinder, and as the filler with clay to make bricks.

Spanish moss isn't actually a moss, or from Spain (you've got to love botanists ). It's in the same family as the 'air plants' that are popular house plants. I just googled the greybeard name and found this story which relates to another one of its names. I love this kind of folklore stuff.

“Old Man’s Beard” – This name stems from tales of where the plant came from… In 1947 Wyndham Hayward reported on a legend that the great Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto persued an Indian Maiden through the forest and up a live oak tree. During the chase his gray beard became entangled in the tree, giving the maiden an opportunity to escape. De Soto freed himself, but several wisps of his beard were left behind. The remnants became Spanish Moss.

 

[Robson Valley]

dave0: you should have got me to bet on the Spanish Moss. I've always considered it a fruticose lichen.
A Bromeliad epiphyte. How 'bout that? I have a few little ones as house plants. They thrive on neglect.

"Old Man's Beard" up here is a pale green bushy fruticose/hairy lichen that grows best on birch tree branches.
Maybe 5cm long at most.