After my Hebridean photos post I thought to put one up of typical moorland plantlife. Many will be bryophytes, basically moss, and I'm not at all sure that they were all taken in the Hebrides as with such photos it is hard to tell apart from going back and finding the original pic to see when it was taken. However, what is interesting is that a lot of this stuff is pretty small and if you walk on peatlands then you are almost certainly standing on some of it with every step.
Sphagum, in particular, plays an important role in the formation of a "bog" which is an ombrotrophic peatland where the plants growing on the surface of the peat have no access to mineral enriched ground water which has been in contact with rocks and minerals. On very old bogs (Until the cooling of the climate about 2600 years ago it was too warm, by 3 - 5 degrees, for peat to grow. It was also drier. So most of our bogs are actually only 2600ish years old) the sphagnum you see on the surface today may, genetically, be the same plant as first established itself when the bog formed so it may be 2600 years old. Despite not being a "vascular" plant sphagnum has a mechanism by which it can move minerals and nutrients to the top of the plant, leaving the bottom part to die off and form peat. As a result sphagnum actually removes nutrients from the bog and sort of stores them up.
Anyhow, photos:
Sphagum, in particular, plays an important role in the formation of a "bog" which is an ombrotrophic peatland where the plants growing on the surface of the peat have no access to mineral enriched ground water which has been in contact with rocks and minerals. On very old bogs (Until the cooling of the climate about 2600 years ago it was too warm, by 3 - 5 degrees, for peat to grow. It was also drier. So most of our bogs are actually only 2600ish years old) the sphagnum you see on the surface today may, genetically, be the same plant as first established itself when the bog formed so it may be 2600 years old. Despite not being a "vascular" plant sphagnum has a mechanism by which it can move minerals and nutrients to the top of the plant, leaving the bottom part to die off and form peat. As a result sphagnum actually removes nutrients from the bog and sort of stores them up.
Anyhow, photos:
really they are. Miniature wonders that carpet the earth.
