# Found an interesting moss today while canoeing.



## Fortuna Wolf (Feb 3, 2007)

I went canoeing in Moore's Creek, Brunswick Co., NC. Yeah, the water was cold.

Here's a quick description of the creek. The creeks around here are mostly rain fed and are slow moving, shallow, and maybe 50ft wide at the most. They drain the swamps and bogs. Aside from a few localized places like Castle Hayne (further downriver), everything is either organics 20ft or more down, or organics on sand (the sandhills). As a result, we get "black water" creeks. The acidity of this creek is 5-6 pH, and dkH and dgH are both < .3 (my test won't go any lower). I couldn't test for potassium or phosphorus, but there weren't any detectable nitrogen levels with my aquarium tests. The actual water colour is, in a white cup, a light yellow. But, when you stack this up 5-10ft down, it appears black, especially when the bottom is covered with leaves. 
In a few places while canoeing we were able to see the bottom, but it was only about 3ft down and sand with scattered leaves and still appeared very dark brown. 
The "banks" of the river are pretty much rows of cypress or other trees. Sometimes, there's even a bit of half decayed organic matter trapped in their roots and knees. Behind the bank, you see much more organic matter between the cypress with standing water everywhere. Sometimes there's catbriar or other marginal plants growing in the hummus. Its a classic swamp.

The trip went as such: I was canoeing with my girlfriend who's also into aquariums too. I noticed that the water level was actually about 1.5ft below where it had stained the trees on the banks, probably due to the drought. On the area between the stains and the water level was dried out black moss. I recognized one species immediately as something I had collected from my yard (its a type that really likes wet areas and sandy creek banks, very common here). It was doing very poorly, and anywhere it was actually submerged it was dead. 
The second type reminded me of an Osmunda fern - its "stems" were a stingy dark black mass like a witch's broom. On the ends sticking into the water was a green bamboo like leaf. Some of it was above the water line, but that was dried out. 
Below the water line there were clusters of it looking pretty bushy and firmly attached to cypress knees and other sunken wood bits. I picked out two clusters and then my girlfriend decided she wanted a bunch more and froze her hand picking at it for 15 minutes.

We also found some other plants growing submerged, but they may just be marginal, depending on the water level and their tolerance, like the (possibly) "dwarf" hydrocotyle in the pictures. The leaves seem to be between .5-1cm wide.



















So I after a 25ml/gallon dip in H2O2 for 5 minutes (it was starting to bubble) I tied some to a rock and tossed it into my experimentation tank. If this bleaches out in a day or two I've got another half cup of it to try again with less H2O2.

This tank in the picture has a ph of 7-7.5, and hardness of about 6-8 d (haven't tested recently, but my water is 2.5 dgH/dkH, and I added 1 tsp epsom salt and 1 tsp calcium carbonate to it). I give it some home made peat extract and DIY CO2 as well.


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## Cliff Mayes (Jan 29, 2007)

The plants all look familiar but I am not dumb enough to hazard a guess.

I just wanted to say that your comment about it being cold reminded me of the Crocodile Dundee quote..."That's not a knife! This...is a knife!"

All thing are relative, I guess. I spent the early hours yesterday standing in the sub-freezing Woods in a snow storm and have spent some time in January in a small boat in the Niagara River chipping off ice from dogs etc. so that seems cold to me but then I read about people in the far North or South that are dealing with the elements and NC looks pretty good.


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## slickwillislim (Oct 11, 2005)

Looks like willow moss. I hope it survives for you, certainly an interesting find.


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## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

Hmmm, not sure why but that moss looks awfully familiar. I know I've seen it somewhere before. Maybe one of my marine and freshwater botany courses.... hmmmmm......


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