Cranberries in sphagnum moss Ripening cranberries over-spread sphagnum at Meathop Moss. Each berry has a red stalk attached to a stem with tiny evergreen leaves. Cranberry creeps over sphagnum moss of golden--green or wine red. A tapestry rich in colour and detail. If I zoom-in on an image I find more and more berries. some immature, no bigger than a pin-head. Carnivorous sundew lurks in the moss, blood-red in hue. Each filament is tipped with a sticky dew that attracts its insect prey. When an insect is caught the sundew leaf closes around it, trapping the insect and digesting it.
Meathop Moss is a Lowland Raised Bog, Sphagnum moss slowly decaying has created a raised dome higher than the surrounding land. It’s super-saturated and highly acidic. Dip a finger into soft, wet sphagnum moss and you delve deep amongst the insect and plant life of a peat bog.
The flora is wonderful. First impressions are the yellow stars of Bog asphodel, fading to gold. Pink flowers of Cross-leaved heath mingle with White-beak sedge. Heather, or Ling, is in tight bud. An osprey flies in with a fish for its young. Large Heath fly over the bog.
Knowing there’s cranberry at Foulshaw Moss I hope to find some here too. After that first glimpse of ripening fruit I find many more. There are beautiful pinkish berries, looking tasty. Green berries ripen, some are speckled and brown. At first all you see is cranberries on a cushion of sphagnum moss. Cranberry is a low, ever-green, creeping sub-shrub with reddish stems that trail over sphagnum moss and hummocks. The plant is interwoven in sphagnum and if you look closely more and more rounded berries become visible, often hidden in sphagnum. Flowers are pink and petal-lobes reflex as they mature. The flower stem is the colour of cranberry juice. Down among the sphagnum lurks blood-red sundew with glistening sticky droplets on each tendril. If an insect touches these droplet the sundew’s tendrils trap it, the leaf closes over it and the carnivorous plant digests its prey.
The flora is wonderful. First impressions are the yellow stars of Bog asphodel, fading to gold. Pink flowers of Cross-leaved heath mingle with White-beak sedge. Heather, or Ling, is in tight bud. An osprey flies in with a fish for its young. Large Heath fly over the bog.
Knowing there’s cranberry at Foulshaw Moss I hope to find some here too. After that first glimpse of ripening fruit I find many more. There are beautiful pinkish berries, looking tasty. Green berries ripen, some are speckled and brown. At first all you see is cranberries on a cushion of sphagnum moss. Cranberry is a low, ever-green, creeping sub-shrub with reddish stems that trail over sphagnum moss and hummocks. The plant is interwoven in sphagnum and if you look closely more and more rounded berries become visible, often hidden in sphagnum. Flowers are pink and petal-lobes reflex as they mature. The flower stem is the colour of cranberry juice. Down among the sphagnum lurks blood-red sundew with glistening sticky droplets on each tendril. If an insect touches these droplet the sundew’s tendrils trap it, the leaf closes over it and the carnivorous plant digests its prey.
Standing on the board-walk, we look down on the flora of the peat bog. There's a tangle of vegetation so it's hard to show individual plants well. To present the flowers of Cranberry and to give close-ups of sundew I turn to my photographic archive.
Sundew can be hidden deep amongst sphagnum and on the fringe of pools at Meathop Moss. In August 2016 I was crossing Blea Moss when I came upon a dense mass of sundew. It's unusual to see it growing so thickly, a single species.
Frogs pop up from this liquid, soupy peat bog . From the board-walk, it’s hard to distinguish lurking things in this soupy weave of vegetation. To help my camera see into it I probably needed to lie on the board walk and linger. But in a group of helpful naturalists that wasn’t a good idea. I like the element of mystery, what you see and what you don't. What my camera sees for me to detect later. I'd hoped to see Bog rosemary but could not find it. I reckon it's in the foreground of this first image of cranberries. The plant is showing well at Meathop Moss right now but cranberries aren't often so easy to find. Knowing their habit and niche habitat helps, and their season.
Bog asphodel has yellow star-like flowers that last only a couple of weeks. In autumn and winter sunlight the seed-heads are deep gold and spectacular. Spikes of bod asphodel seed-heads pierce the snow in winter. The next summer they show beside fresh flowers, a faded and skeletal form like a fragment of weathered bone. Bog asphodel, Narthecium ossifragum.
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