Spotted a weird moss pattern on a boulder in the Smokies

I was hiking the Alum Cave Trail last weekend and stopped to catch my breath near a big rock face. The whole side of this one boulder, maybe 8 feet tall, was covered in moss but in a really clear pattern. It looked like a map of islands, with darker green patches and lighter green channels between them. A guy walking by said it's probably because water runs down the rock in those same paths every time it rains, so the moss grows thicker where it stays wet. It made me look at every rock differently for the rest of the hike. Has anyone else seen something like that, or know what kind of moss it might be? I wish I'd taken a better picture.

3 comments

3 Comments

mitchell.daniel2mo ago

Gotta ask, is a moss pattern on a rock really that deep? It's just water running downhill the same way for a few hundred years. The guy you talked to already gave you the answer. Why do we need to turn every cool thing we see into some big mystery? It's moss, it grows where it's wet. Maybe just enjoy the view and keep walking next time.

veras342mo ago

Actually read a thing once about how moss patterns can show old water flow on rocks, like a map of where it's been wet for ages. It's not just random, it's kinda like the rock's own weather history. So maybe it's not a huge mystery, but it's still a specific record of something. Lets you see time in a weird way.

michaels951mo ago

lol mitchell.daniel coming in hot with the "it's just moss" reality check. I gotta hand it to you though, you're not wrong, but you also sound like me trying to explain to my girlfriend why I can't stop staring at a weird crack in the sidewalk. I once spent a solid 10 minutes taking photos of a frost pattern on my car windshield like I was documenting a crime scene, only to realize I just needed to scrape it off and go to work. So yeah, it's moss, but it's also the kind of thing that makes you feel like you're seeing something secret, even if the secret is just "water went here for a while.