Mossbank is a small, independent field guide to the bryophytes, written for anyone who has ever crouched down to look closely at the green stuff on a wall.
It started, as these things do, with noticing. Once you see one moss properly you start seeing all of them, and it turns out the soft green carpet you walked past for years is a whole quiet kingdom: older than the dinosaurs, living without roots, surviving drought by switching itself off, and holding more of the world together than its size suggests.
What you will find here
The site is organised the way you would actually use it. What is moss covers the biology: how a plant with no roots drinks, why it can dry to a crisp and come back, and where mosses sit in the plant family tree. The species pages profile the mosses you are most likely to meet on walls, roofs, lawns and trees in Britain and northern Europe, with the field marks that separate them. Growing is the horticultural half: propagation, watering, moss lawns and what will grow where. The projects and uses sections cover the hands-on side, from terrariums and kokedama to green roofs, and the FAQ answers the questions that come up most often. The aim throughout is plain and practical, with British names alongside the Latin so you can use both, and no jargon for its own sake.
How it is written
The guides come from a mix of hands-on growing, close reading of the botanical literature and the standard bryology references. Bryophytes are a genuinely difficult group, and honest identification often stops at the genus without a hand lens or a microscope, so the species pages say what can and cannot be told apart by eye rather than pretending every cushion of green has an easy name. Where sources disagree, or where a plant sold as "moss" turns out to be a clubmoss, a lichen or an alga, the page says so plainly. Corrections are genuinely welcome, and several pages already read better because a reader took the time to point something out.
Images and licensing
The photographs are drawn from Wikimedia Commons under their respective licences and are credited in full on the image credits page. The written content is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, so you are free to share and adapt it for non-commercial use as long as you credit Mossbank and pass the same freedom on. For commercial use, get in touch and it can usually be arranged.
Get in touch
Questions, corrections, a photo you would like credited differently, or a moss you cannot identify: the contact page has the address. This is a one-person project run in spare time, so a reply may take a few days, but every message is read.