IT'S IN THE DETAILS

This week’s Weekly Photo Challenge – In the Details – is about the difference between capturing a whole scene – say a big view landscape – and its details.  Moss is everywhere here in the Pacific Northwest, making for fantastic Dr. Seuss trees, enchanting mystical rain forest scenes, and, when you look closely, amazing textures and colors.

These trees are on the side of a road, somewhere within 25 miles or so of Seattle – I don’t remember exactly where because it’s not uncommon to see trees completely covered with moss. Our moist, cool weather creates ideal conditions for it. People think of Seattle being on the West coast, but actually there’s a mountain range between us and the coast, and that, plus another one to our east, traps lots of moist air. And BTW, it does NOT rain all the time here – it’s cloudy and it drizzles intermittently. Real Seattlites go without umbrellas.

The strange mossy tree stump graces the Quinault Rain Forest, whose location down-slope from the Olympic Mountains and close to the coast means it receives about 140 inches of rain a year.

This is a Juniper haircap moss, Polytrichum juniperum, on Echo Mountain, a 900 ‘  rocky outcrop near suburban Seattle that harbors a bog and some rare wildflowers. These spore capsules are on female plants – the male plants are separate. This common moss grows on every continent, and has been used as a diuretic (that’s what Wiki says).

Take a step back…

I think this is Juniper haircap again, in the Quinault Rain Forest, a place that’s supposed to be too wet for it. Maybe I’m wrong. Mosses are complicated – the Seattle area has easily a hundred species or more, and you’d need a microscope to identify some of them.

Moss intermingles with lichens on every inch of these trees in Wallace Falls State Park, in the Central Cascade Mountains east of Seattle.

Back on Echo Mountain, moss takes on brilliant colors and supports an unusual spring wildflower, Sea Blush (Plectritis congesta).

At Bellevue Botanic Garden, across the lake from Seattle, ivy finds a comfortable place to anchor on a mossy tree trunk.

At a park nearby, looking up – instead of ivy, licorice fern (Polypodium glycyrrhiza) has found a foothold in a lush bed of moss.

Speaking of lush beds of moss- this roof supports quite a load, and I bet there’s some inside, too! (On Whidbey Island).

More images that get Lost in the Details can be found here.

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