Mossbank is an independent field guide to the bryophytes, written for anyone who has ever crouched down to look closely at the green stuff on a wall. I am Rowan Hale, and I write all of it.
It started with noticing. Once you look at one moss properly you start seeing all of them, and the soft green you walked past for years turns out to be a whole quiet kingdom: older than the dinosaurs, living without roots, surviving drought by switching itself off. I have grown moss in terrariums and gardens for years now, killed a fair amount of it learning why, and Mossbank is where I write down what actually worked.
What this site is, and is not
Mossbank sells nothing. There is no shop, no course, no affiliate haul dressed up as advice. I run a small newsletter and the site carries some advertising to cover its costs, and that is the whole of the commerce. When I recommend a method it is because it worked for me, not because a link pays. If you ever read a page here and feel it is steering you towards a purchase, tell me, because that is not what this is for.
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.
How I check species and claims
Two kinds of thing get written here, and I hold them to different standards. The practical growing advice comes from doing it: what survived in my own jars and garden, what rotted, what took years longer than the internet promised. Where my experience is thin I say so rather than borrowing someone else's confidence.
The identification and biology is harder, because bryophytes are a genuinely difficult group and it is easy to be confidently wrong. 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. I cross-check names against the standard bryology references and the British and European floras rather than trusting a single web source, and where a plant sold as "moss" is really a clubmoss, a lichen or an alga, the page says so plainly. When sources disagree, or when I am not sure, I would rather write "probably" than invent certainty.
I am an amateur, not a botanist, and I do not have letters after my name. That is exactly why corrections matter. Several pages already read better because a reader who knew more than me took the time to point something out, and that is welcome any day.
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.
Get in touch
Questions, corrections, a photo you would like credited differently, or a moss you cannot identify: email privacy@mossbank.de, or see the contact page. This is a one-person project run in spare time, so a reply may take a few days, but every message is read. More about me is on the author page.