A bryologist on the moss by photographer Peggy Edwards

Flanders Moss NNR

Peggy is a photographer and botanical illustrator amongst other things, and splits her time between California and Scotland so she knows a botanically rich place when she sees one. More info and pictures here. Here are her photos from a visit to Flanders with a moss expert.

Dale Kruse is a bryologist from Texas A&M University (curator, S.M. Tracy Herbarium) in Austen, Texas, who had come over to Scotland to help us catalogue the mosses, grasses and sedges of Gillies Hill.

After a couple of weeks following him around the hill, I decided to treat him to a day on Flanders Moss. As a bryologist he thought he’d died and gone to moss heaven!

He stayed on the boardwalk for most of our visit, but then … well, you can see what happened – I defy you to try to keep a bryologist (and a Texan at that!) off the moss!