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A kid at the community garden in Boise taught me more about moss in 10 minutes than my field guide did
I was poking around the shady north wall of our community garden plots here in Boise last Saturday, poking at some moss with a twig and feeling kind of clueless about what I was even looking at. A kid, maybe 11 or 12, walked up with his mom and said "that one's a haircap, you can tell by the little pointy caps on the stalks." He went on to point out three different kinds growing right there in a 2 foot square patch and told me the trick is looking at how the leaves dry, not just how they look wet. I've been reading about bryophytes for two years and this kid just casually out-identified me in a flower bed. Does anyone have a good starting point for learning mosses by eye instead of by microscope?
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mary_wells28d ago
Have you tried just spending time with one patch over and over? That's what finally made it click for me. I picked a single mossy rock in my yard and checked it every week for a couple months, wet and dry, and after a while your brain just starts noticing the differences on its own.
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