Greenhead Moss: seeing the past and
saving the future
Greenhead Moss Community Nature Park is
one way of bringing science to life. A visit to the
moss can help you see how the peat grew and the
layers of preserved plants changed as the 10000
year-old lake became a fen and then a bog, and how
the pollen record and archaeological evidence fit in
with this. A walk across and around the moss
can show you the variety of plants and animals that
make this area their home.
For thousands of years Greenhead Moss
looked after itself – relying on rainwater for
the small amount of nutrients which it needed to
carry on working successfully. But over the last few
thousand years, and especially over the past 100
years or so, humans have broken too many of the
cycles that the bog needed to stay healthy. The peat
cutting and opencast mining have ultimately been
destructive, but at the same time they are a
distinctive part of the past way of life that has
shaped this part of Scotland.
Link to Industrial heritage>
Now Greenhead Moss could not survive
without help. Monitoring will make sure that the
conservation management plans are helping plant
communities and wildlife on Greenhead Moss to
recover.
Link to restoration
reasons/methods>
Even if the wetland is healthy,
lost or partly deteriorated parts of the peat archive
can never be repaired or restored and this is why it
is so important to save what is left.
Peatlands: a long past and a short
future?
We can see from the story of Greenhead
Moss and the range of special archaeological finds
from other bogs that peat is definitely part of our cultural
heritage: people have lived around bogs, used
them and maybe even feared or revered them for
thousands of years. The way we see and use peat has
changed so much over this time.
Hunter-gatherers may have stalked their
prey around the moss. Since these early times, people
have collected food and used the wood for making
tools and for building. Bog moss made a very good
wound dressing and nappy lining because it is so good
at absorbing water and stops bacteria from growing
quickly. Heather was twisted into ropes, used for
bedding or thatching and woven into nets or baskets.
Bog and heathland plants were a main source of dyes
that were used to colour the wool for everyday
clothes and later for tartans. Birch bark,
meadowsweet, heather, bog myrtle and lichens are just
a few of the plants which were used to produce green,
brown, black and even red and purple. The list is
nearly endless.
Find out more about how
Scottish plants wereused>
www.rbge.org.uk/research/celtica/dbase/searchform.html
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