Morning Eye Candy: Epiphytes!

Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on February 1 2012, by Matt Newman

I had a habit of picking up fallen air plants while bumming around in the woods and swamps as a kid. More often than not it was a clump of Spanish moss clinging to a branch broken from a southern live oak. I would hang these covered branches all around the outside of the house, at least up until the point my dad convinced me the gray-green spirals were full of bats, snakes, and red mites (“chiggers” to a true southerner).

The jury’s still out on how many of his frantic warnings are true, but bring a tangle of the stuff to anyone south of the Virginia state line and there’s a good chance the bystander will keep his distance.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen