Southern Gothic - Spanish Moss

 No Southern Gothic movie would be complete without the other-worldly festoons of Spanish moss, Tillandsia usneoides. It certainly can convey a mood of eerie loneliness and mystery, but for southernors it pretty much just blends into the background. That's a shame, because as garden writer Rufino Osorio puts it, "were it not so common, (S. moss) would rightly be considered one of the wonders of the plant world."*

Spanish Moss Hanging from  Strangler Fig - Rookery Bay Reserve 

Spanish moss is the ultimate epiphyte. Osorio writes, "It has come as close to an aerial existence as a plant can get without sprouting wings and flying." *  The plant is much-reduced, consisting only of a few alternate leaves in a typical Bromeliad rosette wrapped around a long, wiry stem, which produces another rosette in an endless chain.

Tillandsia usneoides - Habit

The leaves produce tiny flower spikes. The flowers also are tiny - maybe 3-4 millimeters across, and very easy to miss. The 3 petals are yellow-green. The flowers are said to be fragrant, but I have trouble detecting an odor. They are pollinated by tiny insects. My plants are flowering now, but not abundantly. 

Flower - Much Magnified

Tillandsia usneoides gets its name from the "Old Man's Beard" lichen, Usnea, which it resembles superficially. The photograph below shows a colony of Usnea that has benn blown to the ground in a scrub area of Rookery Bay Estuarine Reserve.

Usnea - Probably Usnea florida

Like other epiphytes ("airplants") Spanish moss gets its nutrients from rainfall and throughfall, rainwater filtered through leaves and other structures. For this reason it can be used to measure heavy metal pollution in urban areas.** T. usneoides is covered by a layer of specialized umbrella-like scales. The scales are made up of dead cells, with a living stalk. The dead cells soak up water and dissolved nutrients, which the stem then transports down into the mesophyll, the tissue sandwiched between the top and bottom epidermis.

Habit, Specialized Moisture-Absorbing Scales  Right Center

The plant propagates itself by seeds, or by wind and animal dispersal. Birds may use it to build nests. It can tolerate anything from the extreme drought and heat of Florida scrub, where it likely survives on dews and fogs, to shadier and wetter situations. If a strand ends up in a favorable site, even a utility wire,  it will start growing. "My" Spanish moss was left behind as a few strands by the previous homeowner, and I have divided it as it flourished. Twenty-odd years later I have 3 large colonies.( I'm not sure whether the festoons are one plant curled and twisted around itself, or several plants). 

Ecologically it has value as a nutrient recycler, and as habitat for small insects and arachnids. Certain birds and at least one species of bat use it for hiding/roosting. Birds use it to construct nests. Some people think that it is parasitic and that it kills trees, but that isn't so. Healthy trees can produce new leaves faster than the Spanish moss can grow, but a declining tree provides an ideal habitat, so that it might look like the plant has killed it. That said, a heavy growth might make survival harder for a declining plant, because it would shade some of the leaves. Sometimes the colony can get so large and heavy that it breaks branches. 

Spanish moss is widespread in the United States - throughout the Southeast through Texas, and north to Virginia. It also occurs in the Caribbean, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Mexico, Central America and South America down to Chile and Argentina. In some of these areas it is restricted to the coastal plains or lowland and swamp habitats. 

T. usneoides on Scrub Oaks - Naples Preserve, Florida

Spanish moss was, and to some extent, is still used by America's indiginous people for many purposes. Camp bedding, medicines, balls for sports, plugging leaks in dugout canoes and  fire arrows are just some of them. Stripping off the outer layers of the plant leaves a tough, black "wire," which could be used for making cloth or rope. ***

Pioneers used it it many of the same ways. Up until around the 1920's harvesting Spanish moss provided much needed cash for subsistence southeastern farmers. They gathered it, composted it to remove the outer covering, and took it to "ginneries" to be combed and baled. It was sold as upholstery stuffing. The last "moss" factory in Gainesville, Florida, burned in 1963.

It was hard, sometimes dangerous work, as people needed some kind of long pole with a hook to snag it from trees, and sometimes brought down snakes and insects along with the moss. Moss gathering is still practiced in some southern states, a tradition handed down from one generation to another. Now the primary market for Spanish moss is horticultural or for florists' arrangements, either dried or green. **** Several cultivars are available commercially.

Spanish Moss on Oak, Hickey's Creek, Lee County Florida

Spanish moss is an integral feature of the southern landscape. Long may it wave!


Sources:

* Rufino Osorio. A Gardener's Guide to Florida's Native Plants. University Press of Florida. 2001. p.310.

**Oxford 400.Oxford 400

***Bradley C. Bennett. "An Introduction to the Seminole People of South Florida and Their Plants. Part11: Seminole Plant Use." The Palmetto. Fall/Winter, 1997. pp. 16-17, 22.

****Kristine Stewart, Ph.D. "Gold Mine of the Air: The Spanish Moss Industry of Florida." The Palmetto. Vol.21:1. (Nov. 2001).  pp.12-13, back cover.

The Palmetto is the quarterly journal of the Florida Native Plant Society.Florida Native Plant Society