Moss-colored Glasses

Image by woong hoe from Pixabay 

We’ve spent a long time knowing each other, mosses and I. In telling their story, I’ve come to see the world through moss-colored glasses.-Robin Wall Kimmerer

We have harvested a number of specialty forest products, or non-timber forest products, from our own land over the years. Conks, a type of mushroom, was popular a few decades ago, and we sold Douglas fir seed cones for a time. Cascara bark and moss were other items we engaged in foraging and marketing. 

Moss is actually big business. Folks, beginning with local indigenous tribes, have long found good uses for the many varieties of moss found in the Pacific Northwest forest. Currently moss, as an industry, is centered around the floral and decorating markets, used in gardens, aquariums and various types of décor. 

I would like to offer my Etsy shop customers more in the way of moss sustainably harvested from our own private forestland. There is a small hiccup, however. Moss is slow growing. Back in the 70’s the state of South Carolina banned the wild harvesting of moss from Pisgah and Nantahala National Forest because they realized too much was being taken and it was detrimental to the health of the forest and the creatures that depend on it. 

Wild harvesting moss in the Pacific Northwest and Appalachia for commercial purposes is a world unto itself, a sort of underground economy. Honest moss collectors will get the required permit or contract to harvest from national or state forestland or get permission from a local landowner. Not all collectors go to the trouble of doing that, however, so the amount of moss actually collected is uncertain. Estimates run in the millions of pounds, though – and millions of dollars. Because of the uncertainty of how much is actually being taken, and how much can safely be taken, permits for federal or state lands are restricted in many places, if not banned. 

Which, of course, does not stop those who would harvest without a permit. We still have a huge underground economy, often shrouded in secrecy.

As a private landowner, what issues are there if I want to sell to the floral or decoration market? What do we face? 

Theft? We have a large, isolated tract of land and security is an ongoing concern. Not only have we had game poached off our land, but we had a rash of vine maple thefts a few years ago, which would have been sold to the landscaping market as native plants. We haven’t made patrolling for moss thieves a high priority, but it is something to keep in mind. 

How much is too much? For landowners with a stake in the health and sustainability of the forest, learning more about the secret life of mosses is paramount. We could harvest some moss for floral sales, but how much and how often?

Image by NaoYuasa from Pixabay Moss ball

Agro-forestry? Moss, while slow-growing, is actually pretty easy to grow. Perhaps part of the solution is agro-forestry rather than foraging. And how does that look?

One proposal is to grow moss in nursery-type settings instead of wild harvesting it, but what does that require in the way of investment and support? 

A great deal of study and research needs to be done: a moss inventory to determine how much actually grows in our forest, testing to determine how fast it grows back…

In the meantime, we enjoy the lush moss carpet beneath our feet, the witchy strands of old man’s beard flowing from alder branches. 

Moss is worth getting to know.

Margaret

The Use of Red Alder Wood in Crafts

Image by MonikaP from Pixaba

Here grew willows and alders, their trunks twisted like giants’ sinews. Around them bark lichen bloomed blue-white in the darkness. It felt like a good place, where there was old magic. 

-Duncan Harper, “Witch of the Fall”

We were searching for pinecones in the tall grass and brush beneath our twenty-acre stand of Ponderosa pine when we stepped out of the pines into a glade with a small group of elderly red alder, big and tall, in the center. They were covered in lichen and moss, and branches had fallen in a recent windstorm. We took a photo of a strange looking mushroom growing out of a hole in one of the trees. 

The glade we stepped into did seem a bit magical, like the quote from the fantasy book above, although I’m more inclined to C.S. Lewis’s “deep magic” of the Narnia tales, that points back to Christianity rather than paganism. Nature is God’s handiwork, thank you very much. The alder seems like a mystical tree, though, with wood that turns red after being cut. The ancient Celts venerated it, and it was associated with various pagan deities. 

Red alder is common in the Pacific Northwest and our property has alder near every wet spot. Years ago, I recall learning that alder might be marketable for paint brush handles; now it competes with Douglas fir in market price and we sell a bit when we harvest. It is used for the brush handles, still, but also furniture, cabinets, trim, and paneling. 

And get this! Fender has used alder to make their electric guitar bodies since the 1950’s! 

It has other benefits. Traditionally, in the Pacific Northwest, it was used to smoke salmon. The bark, which contains salicon, can be used as a tea to reduce inflammation, or rubbed on the skin to ease the pain of poison oak or insect bites. 

Walking stick by the author

Alder is a member of the birch family and is unusual in a number of ways. Like birch, it is monoecious – that is, it has male and female flowers (calkins) on the same tree. The leaves do not change color in the fall but are shed still green. It adds nitrogen to the ground, and the rotting leaves are a great soil amendment.

Alderwood candleholder

And it is beautiful, both the tree with the distinctive calkins, and the pale, straight-grained wood. We have found a number of craft uses for alder and plan to experiment with more. The young trees or branches make great walking sticks. They dry straight if stored properly and are very strong and light-weight for hiking sticks. The straight grain lends itself well to decorating either by carving, paint or woodburning, and we have done all of that. The bark, in addition to being medicinal, makes a good dye. The alder dye batch we tried, on pure hand-spun wool, was a nice beige color. 

At one point we attempted to make jewelry from the small female alder cones, using electroplating. 

Adler round coasters

Currently we use alder rounds, or “cookies,” in a variety of ways, including crafting candleholders and making coaster sets. We use decoupage on the coasters to either transfer an image, or to just affix one. These are then coated with both decoupage and Verathane for protection. There are plans afoot to use pyrography (woodburning) on the coasters as well. 

And…so much more. The red alder is amazing and versatile and somewhat overlooked in crafts, but I would predict it will gain in popularity in future days. 

In the meantime, it is a nice tree to have in the woods...
Margaret