Yesterday I spent an hour removing a patch of first-year Herb Robert that had germinated in a bed of moss. Whatever it was about the micro-environment of that particular kind of moss, must have been perfect for incubating Herb Robert, because the seedlings were thick, and covered the entire bed of moss. They were all about the same size too, about 3″ high, so I think they all sprouted about the same time. If I kept a log of rainfall maybe I would find that we had a rain a couple weeks ago.
This was one of those rare jobs in which I took off my gloves. The Herb Robert plants were so tiny that my gloves were just too clumsy. I was also down on my knees, going through the patch of Herb Robert one plant at a time. Eventually I developed a technique that worked for this unique situation of herb and moss, kind of a thumb drag across the surface of the moss to flatten the herb and expose the tiny button at the base of the tiny stems.
As I was working, I kept getting a whiff of something I thought might be a dead animal somewhere nearby. Then suddenly it dawned on me what I was smelling. Stinky Bob! That’s the first time I ever mistook the aroma of Herb Robert for a dead animal.
For the photo I carefully removed all but three of the Herbs so that the moss would be more visible. I wanted to see if I could identify the moss in Plants of the Pacific Northwest, by Pojar & Mackinnon. Based on what I read in the guidebook I think it may be moss as opposed to a liverwort, and it might be Crane’s Bill Moss, but I don’t really know. I would love to spend a wet-season afternoon walking through a Puget Sound forest with a moss expert.