Feral cats and Spanish Moss have nothing to do with one another, except that they both keep turning up in the garden. In the photo above I've labeled all the feral cats we've rescued in the past year except for Duane, who was placed in a permanent home on Sept. 1.
Zelda and Snuggles went on to permanent homes today which made me very sad. I'd love to keep them all. . . but they have excellent homes and now we have room to rescue more.
DuPree, Damien Roscoe Roth, and Ramone will be staying. My only non-formerly-feral cat, Felix, refused to get in the photo.
Stormy weather and falling leaves have revealed much Spanish Moss (Tillandsia usneoides) in the gardens. Many homeowners discard the moss thinking that it somehow negatively impacts the host tree. That assumption is incorrect. The tree and the moss have a mutualistic relationship; no harm comes to a tree that supports the Spanish Moss . . . in fact the tree benefits from the relationship. The Moss also benefits as it could not survive on the ground.
Tillandsia can be found as far north as Maryland in the USA but is much more abundant in the Deep South. I regularly stop and collect the moss from homeowners' trash piles and pitch it as high as I can into our trees. I guess I like the look and feel of the plant.
I was very surpirsed in the summer of 2004 how resiliant the moss is. While most of the trees lost most of their leaves to the triple hurricanes of 2004, the moss mostly hung on.
Tillandsia is a bromeliad (think pineapple) and is classified as follows:
Kingdom -- Plantae – Plants
Subkingdom -- Tracheobionta – Vascular plants
Superdivision -- Spermatophyta – Seed plants
Division -- Magnoliophyta – Flowering plants
Class -- Liliopsida – Monocotyledons
Subclass -- Zingiberidae
Order -- Bromeliales
Family -- Bromeliaceae – Bromeliad family
Genus --Tillandsia L. – airplant
Species -- Tillandsia usneoides (L.) L. – Spanish moss
Pictured below is a colony of Spanish Moss hanging over the deck, with my hand for scale.
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