ALSO KNOWN AS: Cinderella Moss, Funaria hygrometrica, cord moss, common cord moss
How to know
Think: aliens rising from the ground.
Their spore heads stand on stems as thin as floss
Basal leaves each of which is as big as a mouse’s eye
It’s strange to have an autumn day hover with smoke, yet this is what happened. New York is still in a drought. One evening recently Brooklyn was laced with smoke. We are familiar with smoke coming from buildings or clouds of people smoking various substances, but this was wood. This was brush and plants in our park. The fire turned out to be small, but it was unnerving.
The Chimney Sweep
Despite the size, the burn seemed to mean something greater is burning. I know you smell it too. We can’t continue on the way we have. We are human, so we are master storytellers, which is our gift and our curse. We believe in things like dreams. We love patterns. When November burns a pattern is broken. I have been wringing my hands for years. But now that my knuckles are sore I’m beginning to wonder if wringing my hands is doing anything. Plants keep growing. Life continues on. We can live and have broken hearts. We can live because we have broken hearts. I have come to believe that something tender will grow over the wound. I might be anthropomorphizing flora. But plants can help us hold space for impossible questions because they have been living alongside us for millennia and we can be comforted by the knowledge they have.
Plants have a way of telling stories themselves, especially the cinderella moss, a moss that is comfortable in some of the most unlikely and diverse places, a moss that has seen change. It grows, as all moss does, on a miniscule scale. It starts out at a rosette of basal leaves that grow in a spiral pattern around the stem. When it is ready to release its spore it grows a single stem that can reach almost an entire inch into the air, topped with a spore filled bulb. Once the spore receptacles are mature they appear to open in red mouths.
The growths look like aliens, seeming to defy gravity as their substantial sporeheads develop much larger than their frail stems, or setae.
The sporehead is capped by a portion that extends out like the stinger of a wasp. This is the male part of the plant. The female part, which is manifest on the same plant, is lower by the leaves. The bonfire moss leaves have a midrib that sometimes stops in the middle so that the leaf opens out like a fan, and sometimes extends to the end so the leaf ends at a sharp point. These leaves are a single cell wall thick. The walls are so transparent the cells are visible with a 10x magnifying glass. Each tiny plant of moss dives down into a tight web with barely a root in sight. The moss is built to withstand wind and movement, so they grow tiny rhizoids which stick to walls the way a wet paper towel sticks on a wall. This is called capillary action. If they are displaced, they will simply grow thousands of new legs.
Bonfire moss is in the Funariaceae family, a group that shares these ovular spore containers that are the defining characteristic of bonfire moss. In all, there are 189 species of Funaria. The name comes from the Latin “funis”, meaning “cord” for the long stems that emerge from each of its species.
What makes this moss different from any other kind of moss that reflects its names, that gives me some sort of hope that it will be the first to grow after a burn. They are named Cinderella moss, as their shapes look as if they are small creatures sweeping up the ashes. Or bonfire moss, a chartreuse, nearly transparent covering in the nutrient rich ground once the fire is burned out. However, they are a short lived species. This moss grows in a span of several months and then will disappear, like the first responder of the forest. As they age, they too, burn with a slowness, in orange and reddish. Heathland in the UK, created by burns, is matted with this moss in the fire’s aftermath.
Tiny Poets
There are two kinds of mosses; acrocarpous which creates mounds, and grows in tall stands. The acrocarpus mosses stand one at a time. They don’t sprawl or spread long arms. The loose hairlike mosses swishing river rocks. The acrocarpous has single stems and minimal leaves. They release spores from the top of their stems. Pleurocarpous, creeps and lets spores from the middle of its stem which grows like rough hair from its home place. It isn’t hard to see that the bonfire is the acrocarpous variety. And in a spirit of bringing earth together again, as if to bandage it after fire. The bonfire moss huddles close together in delicate greens. they are made of ovals, from their leaves to their spore receptacles, or sporophytes. The growth pattern of this plant is not as tight as many mosses. Unlike the uniform pincushion mosses that loose their identity to a mass of green, the bonfire moss gives space to each of its basal leaves, as if each one is precious, in need of its own space.
But it needs moisture. It will grow on wet forest floors or damp rock walls. It has even been found in the Niagara Cave in Minnesota and survives even in 90% heavy water conditions. Heavy water has a slightly different chemical composition to the H2O. It has a higher melting point and it is, indeed, thicker than water. It doesn’t have that slight blue tinge we know water to have. It can be detrimental to health in small animals and lethal in large quantities. But this moss can survive it. Not to mention its growth in both alkaline or acidic soils. Studies have been shown that it clears chemicals from soil. It grows on bones. It grows and grows.
However resilient this moss is, it does love the sun. While it is famous for covering burnt land, it also will spread on disrupted sites favoring clear shafts of sun. The bonfire moss will grow in the cool first days of spring. It grows in sand and limestone and can be found throughout temperate regions all over the world. It is abundant throughout temperate regions of the world. Because of this impressive resilience, this is not a threatened species.
The plant congregates through a tiny web of rhizoids that function to cool the land, hold in moisture, and help to break down the hardest substances, growing in that nutrient rich soil the fire left. In this way it creates nutrient rich, and moist soil for other species to establish.
So it does not only tell a story of destruction, it imagines a future.
Among the earliest of plants, which evolved about 400 million years ago, the moss has not called attention to itself, which does not mean that moss has not been useful to animals and plants alike. These plants are home to a variety of insects who lay their eggs in the protective greenery. As Robin Wall Kimmerer describes, mosses even temper wind at that low level, forming safe spaces for life.
Ethnobotanically mosses have been used to soften and soak, to soothe and heal open wounds. Bonfire moss is no different. Its light clumping has allowed it to be used like a sponge or to insulate, so its practical uses are numerous.
In mythology mosses are thresholds because of their shape shifting nature. They create the shapes they cling to, so they are almost like a living veil between the past and the present. And specifically, the bonfire moss, who follows the movement of earth working and the trajectory of fire. The bonfire moss seems to be a dedicated scribe telling the story of movement over the land. In a Cree myth, the moss is that which keeps the earth together. We are on massive rafts, and sometimes, when the water comes through the thick web of moss we are reminded of the water on which we are floating. In Northern European traditions the moss people are rarely seen though they are fierce protectors of the forest. May we remember, we are not the only ones working to protect us; that after the fire there will be growth.
myth for bonfire moss
music for myth
Music by: Sirius Beat - The Cosmos
Forager Friendly?
Sure!
Not to be confused with banded cord moss, a very similar moss with ovular spore containers and rosette leaves. These spore receptacles don’t grow as tall.
Or rough-stalked feather moss. This is a chaotically growing moss like thousands of little soft green worms growing over each other. The spores on this plant emerge from their stems.
Sources
https://www.inaturalist.org/guide_taxa/1140813
https://www.fondriest.com/news/common-cord-moss-uncommonly-adept-lead-removal-researchers-find.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funaria_hygrometrica
https://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/mosses/plants/bonfire_moss.html
https://mossandstonegardens.com/blog/knowing-your-acrocarp-from-you-pleurocarp-moss-rocks/
https://www.britishbryologicalsociety.org.uk/learning/species-finder/funaria-hygrometrica/
https://www.britannica.com/plant/bryophyte
https://www.wlgf.org/mosses.html#Bookmark1
https://www.britishbryologicalsociety.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Funaria-hygrometrica.pdf
https://home.howstuffworks.com/moss2.htm
https://greg.app/bonfire-moss-benefits/
https://www.botanicalrealm.com/plant-identification/bonfire-moss-funaria-hygrometrica/
Gathering Moss, Robin Wall Kimmerer
http://www.native-languages.org/creestory4.htm
an inspiration for the myth, thanks to the amazing writers in the Brooklyn Women’s Writing Group Workshop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cowherd_and_the_Weaver_Girl
https://www.botanicalrealm.com/plant-identification/funaria/
https://www.art2arts.co.uk/artwork/funaria-hygrometrica-bonfire-moss
https://wildflowersearch.org/search?&tsn=15818
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/03/the-many-meanings-of-moss
