Rowan Hale writes Mossbank. An amateur naturalist who has grown moss in terrariums and gardens for years, fusses over correct species identification, and writes to share the craft rather than to sell anything.
Who I am
I am Rowan. I am not a botanist and I have no PhD; I am someone who got quietly hooked on moss and never fell out of love with it. It began with a jar on a windowsill that would not stay green, and the stubbornness to work out why. Years on, I keep several terrarium jars, patches of moss in a shaded garden, and a running notebook of what thrives and what sulks. Mossbank grew out of that notebook.
What I actually do with moss
Mostly I grow it and watch it. Closed terrariums are where I have learned the most, because a sealed jar shows you very quickly whether you have the light, the air and the moisture right, or whether you are about to grow mould instead. I have raised cushion mosses from small transplants, run the buttermilk slurry on stone with mixed results, tried and failed to keep bog moss happy in tap water, and spent more time than is reasonable with a hand lens working out whether the grey stuff on the wall is one species or three. Most of what I know came from getting it wrong first.
How I write
I lead with the practical answer, because that is what I want when I look something up. I try to be honest about the edges of what I know: moss identification is easy to get wrong, and I would rather say "I think this is" than pretend to a certainty I do not have. Where I am repeating something from the botanical literature rather than from my own hands, the page usually says so. Corrections are genuinely welcome, and I have quietly rewritten several pages because a reader knew better.
Contact
You can reach me at privacy@mossbank.de. If you have a moss you cannot name, a clear photo of it in place plus a note of where and how big it was gets you a far better answer than a guess from a blurry crop. More on what Mossbank is, and how species and claims are checked, is on the about page.