Moss is so ordinary that it is easy to forget how long, and how usefully, people have leaned on it. Here is a short tour of its working past, from the walls of a cabin to the wards of a field hospital.
Building and packing
For centuries moss chinked the gaps between the logs of cabins and the planks of boats, sealing out draughts and damp because it packs tight, holds a little moisture and resists rot. Dried moss stuffed mattresses, pillows and cushions, and padded all manner of goods in transit, including live plants and bulbs sent long distances. Light, springy and free for the gathering, it was the obvious material to hand long before anyone thought to buy a substitute in a shop.
The Iceman's moss
When the 5,000-year-old body known as Otzi was found in the Alps, mosses were among the plant remains with him, including pieces that had no business growing where he died. They had been carried, used for packing or wrapping, and they help researchers trace where he had been. Even a Copper Age traveller had moss about his person, put to work in the same plain ways people would use it for the next five thousand years.
Sphagnum and the wars
The best-known chapter is medical. Sphagnum, the bog moss, is highly absorbent and slightly acidic, which discourages bacteria, and it had been laid on wounds for a very long time. When the First World War outran the supply of cotton dressings, sphagnum was gathered from bogs by the sackful, cleaned of twigs and beetles, and sewn into muslin dressings that could hold far more fluid than cotton of the same weight. It genuinely saved lives, and it is a striking thing to remember while looking at a patch of moss on a wall. More on the plant itself is in sphagnum moss and its many uses.
Why moss suited the work
The uses all trace back to how a moss is built. It has no true roots; its thread-like rhizoids only anchor it, and it takes up water across its whole surface rather than drawing it from the ground. That is why dried moss drinks so readily and holds so much, and why sphagnum in particular, with its large empty cells built for storing water, works so well as a dressing or a liner. Moss also tolerates drying out completely, going dormant and reviving when it is wetted again, so gathered moss keeps for a long time and comes back to use with a soak. None of this was understood as botany at the time. People simply learned by handling it that moss was clean, soft, absorbent and slow to rot.
From bog to hearth
Beyond bandages and building, moss did steady domestic work. It was twisted and packed as insulation into roofs and between floorboards, worked into the seams of wooden vessels, and used as a rough wadding and wiping cloth. Bundled and dried it made a serviceable filling for bedding, and gathered fresh it wrapped roots and cuttings for the journey between gardens. Because it cost nothing but the effort of picking it, moss belonged to ordinary households rather than to trade, which is partly why so little of its use was written down. Much of what we know comes from the objects and burials it survives in, from the Iceman's pack to the dressings of a century ago. See what moss is good for for the ways it still earns its keep today.