FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I live in Oregon, where there is tons of moss of many different flavors, probably the moss capitol of the world. Moss is extremely abundant and legally harvesting moss is a multi-million dollar industry. I've been in forests where the entire ground cover is moss as far as the eye can see. Closer to the coast, everything is covered in moss, not just the ground. The included pics are just a couple of the hundreds of types of moss here, some that look similar to New Zealand Sphagum. I'm curious if anyone has used this before for potting material as well as top dressing? I can gather 12 cubic feet for personal use without even needing a permit, and can ask for more.

It doesn't matter what it looks like, no other moss will have the right moisture-retaining properties and there's no way to know if it'll be toxic to the plants or not. Sphagnum does grow in Oregon though.

I guess that's part of my question. VFTs aren't from New Zealand either, so "no other moss will have the right moisture-containing properties" seems unreasonable. It appears to be a complete stroke of luck for LFSM that comes from the opposite end of the globe. Moisture retention as well as how quickly it releases it seems to have an acceptable range, not an exact value with LFSM being a perfect example as a non-native material that just happens to work because someone experimented with it. I see your point with possible toxicity, I guess someone took the same risk with LFSM. Maybe someone has tried this with something from Oregon?

It's not moss from New Zealand specifically, it's moss species in the genus Sphagnum, which grow pretty much everywhere around the world. The New Zealand stuff just tends to be the best quality commercial product.

I have some native Oregon Sphagnum moss growing outside, though I haven't tried growing any CPs in it (at least on purpose, some D. intermedia seeds got in there) since I have regular trouble with birds attacking it so I keep the moss covered up with a screen.

As for the moss you found, if you want to try it go ahead but I would not expect positive results. I doubt any of these mosses will retain water anywhere near as well as Sphagnum though, and there are other factors to consider such as the availability of free nutrients, pH, resistance to decomposition, etc.

optique wrote:well NZ LFSM is a big renewable cash farm if anything in US would work well it would have been striped bare many years ago. clone a sundew try it, and make a post results might shock us all.

We likely don't have large enough amounts of Sphagnum in single locations in the US to support the sort of operation they have in New Zealand. There is at least one commercial Sphagnum operation here though, but their product is extremely dirty and full of debris so I'm not really sure how they're harvesting it.

Those were just some sample pics, as I'm sure your aware there's a bunch of different kinds here. I'll see what I can hunt up. I started this thread questioning whether someone had already tried but maybe this is yet to be explored. Seems that Oregon moss harvesting averages over $8 million at more than 250tons annually.

Natedawg wrote:I live in Oregon, where there is tons of moss of many different flavors, probably the moss capitol of the world. Moss is extremely abundant and legally harvesting moss is a multi-million dollar industry. I've been in forests where the entire ground cover is moss as far as the eye can see. Closer to the coast, everything is covered in moss, not just the ground. The included pics are just a couple of the hundreds of types of moss here, some that look similar to New Zealand Sphagum. I'm curious if anyone has used this before for potting material as well as top dressing? I can gather 12 cubic feet for personal use without even needing a permit, and can ask for more.

The moss in the picture is a Fern moss. It's used more for top dressing plants. Mosser-lee uses fern moss and it is not good for fly traps.
There are several mosses that grow wild at my place and not all are good for fly traps.
Long fiber sphagnum Moss is a native to NC, where fly traps grow.
New Zealand is a type of lfsm