Moss

I love moss and Lichen. There was plenty there to photograph. Autumn leaves and rushing streams too. I was luck to catch a kinglet with a large grub. I didn’t have me long lens so missed photographing the others I saw.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Fahnestock SP, NY 10/17/2019

December 2015 was mild and wet in Stoke Newington, London, and many mosses, liverworts and lichens flourished. I used my macro lens to capture some of them.

I have a special fondness for mosses. When I was 6 my mother moved to London. We lived at 32 Queensborogh Terrace, Bayswater, in a converted townhouse. I slept in a little unheated room at the rear of the first floor past the kitchen that used to be the pantry or cold storage. It was cold and damp there. It had a little rain gutter outside a small window that was filled with moss of various types. I loved my little garden. I imagined fairies using the sporophyte’s stalk (seta) and the light in the red capsule (operculum).

They are complex little organisms. It takes about a quarter to half a year for the sporophyte to mature from the gamophyte. The sporophyte is made up of a long stalk, called a seta, and capped by a cap called the operculum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moss).