Spanish moss

(Credit for picture to http://tour.airstreamlife.com/weblog/Tampa%20Spanish%20Moss%201.jpg)

Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) is one of the defining characteristics of Florida and other parts of the Southern United States, even Argentina where the weather is warm and humid enough. Spanish moss is not related to moss or even lichens, like the beard lichen. It is actually a flowering plant of the Bromeliad family—like pineapple and ornamental bromeliads found in flower beds!

According to legend, “there was once a traveler who came with his Spanish fiancée in the 1700s to start a plantation near the city of Charleston SC. She was a beautiful bride-to-be with long flowing raven hair. As the couple was walking over the plantation sight near the forest, and making plans for their future, they were suddenly attacked by a band of Cherokee who were not happy to share the land of their forefathers with strangers. As a final warning to stay away from the Cherokee nation, they cut off the long dark hair of the bride-to-be and threw it up in an old live oak tree. As the people came back day after day and week after week, they began to notice the hair had shriveled and turned grey and had begun spreading from tree to tree. Over the years the moss spread from South Carolina to Georgia and Florida. To this day, if one stands under a live oak tree, one will see the moss jump from tree to tree…” (http://soggybottomtours.com/Tales.html).

Spanish moss is an epiphyte, meaning that it grows on other plants. It doesn’t obtain its food or water from the other plant, however, only support. The branches of the spreading oaks in Florida provide a wonderful perch from which the Spanish moss can hang and collect water from the humid air. Hanging there blowing in the wind, drenched in sunlight, photosynthesis can provide the food it needs to flourish.

The blooms are small flowers that are wind pollinated. Roots, if present at all, are just for hanging onto the rough bark of the trees in which it lives.

Spanish moss has been used for arts and crafts, bedding for flower gardens, and even for stuffing mattresses and pillows. Many people falsely believe that it harbors chiggers (a really nasty little mite that redefines the term “to itch.”); however, this is only true after the Spanish moss falls to the ground.

Spanish moss gives a somewhat gothic appearance to the south and has been the subject of and the inspiration for many poems and songs (including one by Gordon Lightfoot). My favorite poem is this one from 1934 by Lila Neville entitled

WET MOSS

The dripping, tangled masses
Sway with ease
Among the groping branches
Of the trees.

The wind slides through the filigree
Out of sight
To moan and utter whispers
Through the night.

And so it seems to haunt me, clinging moss and weird,
As ragged and unkempt as Neptune’s hoary beard.

--mak