How a handful of moss becomes a landscape

Beside the cairns at Camster, I get down on my knees on the boardwalk and roll up a sleeve to begin one of my favourite Blue Peter moments. The materials are considerably wetter than anything usually found on a kitchen table, although they provide an excellent introduction to the peatlands. Having asked everybody to remain on the boardwalk because the bog can be deep, I reach into a pool and lift out some green sphagnum moss. Here is something we can examine together before considering the enormous landscape these small plants help create.

The green material is growing, while beneath it lie the brown remains of older growth. I show guests both, before reaching farther into the water and bringing up a dripping handful of soft, matted material. As I squeeze out the water, they can see what I mean by peat in the making. Sphagnum and other bog plants grow, die and leave remains that break down unusually slowly in the waterlogged ground. New growth continues above them, while some of the older material survives beneath, gradually accumulating rather than disappearing through complete decay.

Water is essential to that process. Saturated ground contains little oxygen, slowing decomposition, while cool conditions and acidity further restrict the breakdown. Sphagnum helps maintain those conditions by holding water and making its surroundings more acidic. Across the Flow Country, a cool, wet climate allows peat to develop beyond individual pools, across hollows, flatter ground and gentle slopes. This is the blanket in blanket bog, built over thousands of years from plants whose living successors still cover its surface.

For guests looking at the wet material in my hand, the connection between moss and landscape becomes something they can see rather than simply take on trust. There is another connection within it, because plants take carbon from the atmosphere as they grow, and some of that carbon remains in the plant material preserved as peat. In the audio blogcast, we follow the process farther back, exploring how the country left by the ice gradually acquired its blanket, and why a layer that grows so slowly can become such a substantial store.

To learn more, listen to the blogcast or book one of our North Coast Explorer tours.