An album of mosses in the late-winter woods.
Old Pa Pitt would be very grateful to anyone who can identify that tiny cone in the middle of the picture.
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Moss
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A Walk in the Kane Woods
An early-fall walk in the Kane Woods Nature Area in Scott Township. Above, the Tom the Tinker Trail.
Blue Wood Aster (Symphyotrichum cordifolium).
A moss-covered log.
The Liberty Trail.
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A Forest of Moss
If you look at it through a jeweler’s loupe, you find that moss comes in fascinatingly different forms. You also discover something of its habits, such as the way it traps tiny droplets of water.
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Fun with a Jeweler’s Loupe
A cell-phone camera has a very small lens. This can be a liability, but in some cases it can be an advantage. For example, the lens on a cheap phone is small enough to take pictures through a jeweler’s loupe. Above, flowers of Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica), with the edge of the loupe left in the picture as a kind of visual statement of the theme of this article. Actually, it’s easy to put the lens right in the middle of the loupe and not see the edges at all. Here are some of the other things you can see with a loupe and a cheap little cell-phone camera:
Lichen growing on a twig.
Moss on a log.
Chickweed (Stellaria media). For comparison, here is a fairly close photograph of the entire plant without the jeweler’s loupe:
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Waterfall and Mossy Rock
Rendered with only the moss in natural color and the rest in black and white, because you can do that with image-manipulation software.
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Moss
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Roots
The base of a tree against a sidewalk in Schenley Farms.
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A Moss-Covered Log
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Tree-Bark Ecosystem
An entire ecosystem depends on the bark of this one tree in Mount Lebanon: moss, lichens, a bug, and tiny mushrooms. How tiny are they? Below is a left index finger for scale.
Camera: Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3, showing off its impressive macro capability. These pictures came straight from the camera, with no cropping or editing. This is where old Pa Pitt mentions once again that he bought this camera for 99¢.
