ALSO KNOWN AS: cushion moss, Leucobryum glaucum, pillow moss, bun moss
Not windswept broom moss, though they often cohabitate in oak forests.
Or Grimmia muehlenbeckii. These grow in similarly tight clusters, but they are much more rare and northern, showing up in places like New Hampshire and Rhode Island. They are also on a more grey to greenish black spectrum.
How to know
Slightly domed colonies of moss
Light green to nearly silver in tone
The plants are not so tight that their leaves can’t spread. These mosses have relatively wide bodies from which pronounced leaves extend.
I know I was not the only child who imagined a home in a copse of trees. Moss just had that special texture softening the edges of the wood into something truly luxurious. It has a way of summoning all things to it. We can’t describe our desire to be close to moss, but it’s an effect the plant has mastered as it binds the forest together in a quiet seduction, a calming embrace. Assisting in the decomposition of dead trees, moss brings life into communion with that which has died and is transforming.
Moss is so often overlooked in scientific and botanical studies. To the layperson it can be confused with lichen or other types of tiny laced plants.
But moss acts like a generative glue, holding the largest elements that make up a forest together, like winds, rains, and soil, but also as nourishment for the smallest and thus most foundational beings of the wood.
It’s hard to talk about moss because there is so little common language around it. And, frankly, there aren't really many words to describe it because they are so small. It’s rare to look close enough to see the miniscule differences between mosses. So to describe them, we have to speak on the level of cells. Their leaves are larger than some moss leaves. They can be 4-6 cells long. And yet they impact entire forests as they store and filter water to create moist soil conditions for other plants to grow.
Mosses are at times the first to appear after a forest fire, collecting the water, nestling in the crevices to make what has fallen in the catastrophe, viable. But generally it flourishes in the deeper forests. Pincushion moss is particularly resilient and grows in a range of forests and conditions, but it is most prevalent in hardwood forests. It congregates tightly together, so much so that you could take an entire colony of it, and indeed, use it as a pin cushion. But not to hold pins: to eat them. Mosses can absorb metal ions. They are slightly hard and dome shaped, reminiscent of rounded pincushions. They are in the acrocarpous species, meaning that they grow closely together, rather than the mosses that branch out. Think of a shaggy texture that is visible on all pincushion mosses.
Prevalent in northeast to southeastern portions of the United States up into southern Canada, Leucobryum, or other pin cushion species, have been found in Europe as well as Asia. But unlike many of the plants that came to the Americas at the hands of settlers and immigrants, these had established themselves long before, when the continents were still fused together, and here they remain, as a testament to the profound resilience of their kind. Mosses in general can grow all over the world, from deserts, to tundras, and of course, rain forests. During dry or cold seasons, mosses will become dormant, slowly taking in what nutrients they can and waiting until water is easily flowing again. This particular pin cushion moss has the scientific name glaucum, means ‘white’ but they range from a green to silverish tone, this is because their leaves don’t have as much chlorophyll as other plants.
When you see a cluster of moss, know that there are individual plants growing from each one, these are small forests.
The moss creates its own space, and as a result, deeply impacts the world around it. Moss is home to mites and tiny insects and food for small animals who live on the first floor, but, importantly, they regulate the understory through temperature control and decomposition. Their soft texture and tiny air pockets create buffers for wind, smoothing it down and protecting the new growth on the forest floor.
Mosses are literally sponges. They are in the Bryophyte family which a loose term that means it is a small tightly packed plant. But in truth, these plants all operate very differently than other plants. Mosses are different from their fern and herbaceous counterparts because they are non-vascular. Nonvascular which means that they don’t have a xylem and phloem that moves the water around their system. The movement over water and minerals stays in a right circle within the moss’s tiny body, or thallus. So without a vascular structure they can’t grow tall, nor can they grow traditional roots, but their strength in their colonies which spread slowly across the trees and rocks close to the forest floor in large masses, all together. Like ferns, they are an ancient plant that produce spores to reproduce. Mosses have been detected up to 450 million years ago.
But because there has been so little documented in western science about mosses, the information is spotty at best in Mosses, Liverwords, and Hornworts by Ralph Pope bemoaned the difficulty many scientists face relating to moss information “Not surprisingly, the greatest bryophyte diversity tends to appear in places where a bryologist has lived.” (Pope, 3).
If you are looking for mosses, you will find people who love mosses, because those are the people who will be talking about them.
Moss is some of the smallest of plants, so it has adapted in several ways to survive. Their rhizoids work into rocks and trees, dissolving them slowly over time, and stabilizing them into the soil. Pincushion moss is slightly more drought resistant than most mosses, having adapted to slightly northern climates and oak woodlands, but they still need 90% moisture nearly all the time to survive. If its area is disturbed their stems release small rhizoids, meaning that they can reestablish themselves on nearly any surface. This adaptability is helpful because crows and chipmunks tend to overturn them if they are looking for bugs like the springtails and moss mites that live between the tiny blades. Not to mention the salamanders and amphibians who cool on their soft moist carpet. According to Robin Wall Kimmerer in her essential book, Gathering Moss, mites and insects have used mats of moss to live and evolve throughout the millennia, establishing in these small mossy worlds, the base in the cycle of life in the forest.
But pincushion mosses were never, in fact, pin cushions. Mosses have not been used medicinally as far as my research suggests, nor have they been used historically for food. But their softness and absorbency has been used the world over for bedding, menstruation, and diapers. Their antiseptic properties have made them a perfect bandage for wounds.
Myth for pincushion moss
As many know, trolls, who would otherwise live forever, become rock when they come into contact with the sun. Usually the story stops there. The rocks we see all through the world are trolls who made mistakes long ago. But there’s more to the story. A long time ago the trolls stayed as rocks and would never return to the earth to become other things the way all other beings wove in and out of death like so many threads making up a tapestry. But because the rocks never changed, they kept all their minerals and soil inside of them, and all of life soon slowed, stopped and harden. The world became rock and it was silent as a grave.
They just kept getting heavier. Many years went by before one of the stones found the strength to speak. “We must find a way to become less heavy, to become other things and begin again.” Many more years passed before all of the stones gathered the strength to sing a single note, one single breath that collected together in a form that looked exactly like a rock itself. But it was no rock, it was pincushion moss and began to break the rocks up, make space for bugs and trees and all of life once more.
We look to moss to remind us that every monument will be softened, every building brought back to earth. Every sword can be dissolved.
Forager Friendly?
Mosses are often used in potted plants. Because they are so small it’s hard to remember the incredible importance these mosses hold to their environments, so many mosses are over harvested. But pincushion moss is common, so it can be harvested with intention as an insulator, an absorber, or as fuel for fire. In a survival situation moss can potentially be used as clean water. Because it has acidic properties it doesn’t promote the growth of bacteria, so it can be wrung out like a sponge to drink from.
Sources
Robin Wall Kimmerer Gathering Moss
Ralph Pope Mosses, Liverworts, and Hornworts: A Field Guide to Common Bryophytes of the Northeast
https://woodlandinfo.org/consider-the-moss/
https://wcbotanicalclub.org/bryophytes/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucobryum_glaucum
https://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/mosses/plants/pincushion.html
https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/moss
https://wildadirondacks.org/adirondack-mosses.html
https://www.sunnysports.com/blog/5-ways-use-moss-outdoor-survival/

clusters of moss are tiny forests: a magic thought. loved the myth of this lant: the way something so gentle and soft can break apart rock and metal