What is Spanish moss?
The big cypress trees of Florida seem to wear green grey wigs of trailing hair. The gnarled quick oaks of Louisiana seem to bn wearing long, green grey beards on their branches. These fuzzy wigs and beards, we are told, are Spanish moss, a plant that grows high in the branches of many trees in the warm Southland. Sometimes the fuzzy tangle covers an avenue of trees and makes a shady tunnel.
Spanish moss is not moss at all. Nor is it Spanish. When you see it growing high in the branches of a tree, you might think it is a parasite plant like the mistletoe. But Spanish moss is not a parasite which takes its food from another plant.
The strange plant is a native of the Americas. It grows in the warm, damp regions of Central and South America and the sunny, damp regions of North Africa. It also grows among the forest trees of the West Indies.
We always find Spanish moss growing high in the branches of a tree. Its trailing streamers look very different from the sturdy pineapple plant, which is always found squatting on the ground. Nevertheless the two plants are cousins. Spanish moss, which is actually an American plant, is a member of the pineapple plant family.
Most plants, of course, have their roots in the ground. They make a living by soaking up moisture and chemicals from the soil. Spanish moss has no roots in the ground in fact, it has no roots at all. The seed for a new plant finds a small crack in the bark of a lofty branch. There it clings with the help of tiny clamps.
Soon the little seeds begins to grow a hairy stem which branches out into a fuzz of fragile foliage.
The trailing branches got longer and longer and the entire plant is covered with hairy scales. The fuzzy streamers act like sponges. They trap the rain, the dew and the misty moisture from the air and hold it in tiny pockets. This is the water which the Spanish moss uses to make a living.
Plants need air and sunshine as well as water. This is why Spanish moss chooses to live high in the branches of a tree. It uses the tree to hoist itself up and get a salt in the sunshine, but it never steals its food from the tree as does a parasite plant.
The early settlers of America were always glad to find trailing streamers of Spanish moss, for they used it to make comfortable beds. Nowadays we use its spongy streamers as a packing material. It also is used in flower shops to protect the root; of potted plants. Some people use Spanish moss to line the baskets of trailing plants which hang on their walls.