702 



Handbook of Nature-Study 



Photo by Verne Morton. 



The hair-cap moss. 



THE HAIR-CAP MOSS. OR PIGEON WHEAT 



Teacher's Story 



The mosses are a 

 special delight to 

 children because they 

 are green and beauti- 

 ful before other plants 

 have gained their 

 greenness in the spring 

 and after they have 

 lost it in the fall; to 

 the discerning e}'e, a 

 mossy bankor a mossy 

 log is a thingof beauty 

 always. "When we 

 were children we re- 

 garded moss as a 

 forest for fairy folk, 

 each moss stem being 

 a tree, and we natural- 

 ly concluded that fairy 

 forests were evergreen. 

 We also had other 

 diversions with pigeon 

 wheat, for we took 

 the fruiting stem, 

 pulled the cap off the spore-capsule, tucked the other end of the red stem 

 into the middle of the capsule, making a beautiful coral ring with an 

 emerald "set." To be sure these rings were rather too delicate to last 

 long, but there were plenty more to be had for nothing; so we made these 

 rings into long chains which we wore as necklaces for brief and happy 

 moments, their evanescence being one of their charms. 



Pigeon wheat is a rather large moss which grows on dry knolls, usually 

 near the margins of damp woodlands in just those places where winter- 

 greens love to grow. In fall or winter it forms a greenish brown mass of 

 bristling stems; in the early summer the stems are tipped with the vivid 

 green of the new growth. The bristling appearance comes from the long 

 sharp leaves set thickly upon the ruddy brown stems; each leaf is pretty 

 to look at with a lens, which reveals it as thick though narrow, grooved 

 along the middle, the edges usually armed with sharp teeth and the base 

 clasping the stem. These leaves, although so small, are wonderfully 

 made ; during the hot, dry weather they shut up lengthwise and twist into 

 the merest threads, in order to keep their soft, green surfaces from losing 

 their moisture by exposure to the air ; more than this, they lift themselves 

 and huddle close to the stem, and are thus as snug and safe as may be from 

 the effect of drought ; but as soon as the rains come, they straighten back 

 at right angles to the stem, and curve their tips downward in a joyful 

 expanding. Bring in some of this moss and let it dry, and then drop it 

 into a glass of water and watch this miracle of leaf movement! And yet 

 it is no miracle but a mechanism quite automatic — and therefore — like 

 other miracles, when once they are understood. 



