Country diary: the magic of moss

Rokeby Park, Teesdale: It's tempting to let the imagination wander into the deepest recesses of the wildwood of mosses

With winter almost over it's tempting to hunker down during these last cold days and focus on the prospect of primroses and bluebells, but there is beauty to be found now in lowlier forms of plant life. Many woodland and grassland mosses begin new growth while it is still too cold for trees to leaf and grass to grow, before they can be cast into deep shade by surrounding vegetation.

Today the top of a wall beside this lane near the river Tees was decked with new green carpets. The most luxuriant was springy turf moss, Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus, familiar to anyone who has a poorly drained lawn. Its unruly red-stemmed shoots, forcing their way like jack-in-the-boxes through the matted remains of last year's grasses, shone in the early morning light. As I bent to examine its hooked leaves, with their long, silvery hair points, there was a hint of that humic aroma of sun-warmed soil that grows stronger as spring approaches.