SPAGNUM MOSS on the FEN

by Larry Trupp

Title

SPAGNUM MOSS on the FEN

Artist

Larry Trupp

Medium

Photograph - Photography, Digital Photography

Description

Did you know that:
20, 000 years ago, almost all of Canada and the Northern United States was covered by a giant glacier. When the glacier melted, it left a tremendous amount of water all over Ontario in the form of lakes, rivers and wetlands. There are many kinds of wetlands , that you are probably familiar with like marshes, swamps and bogs but the one before you is actually a FEN.
Biologically, wetlands like marshes are among the most productive habitants on Earth. They receive plenty of light and water, which makes them perfect for plant growth, and they provide food for many animals. Wetlands like bogs and fens, however tend to be less productive because their water is stagnant, cold, low in oxygen and nutrients, and acidic. Nonetheless, they are ￿Home Sweet Home￿ to many perserving plants.
Would you consider having a BATH in a Fen? Probably not, but waterways can be compared to bathtubs, to illustrate how they function. Lakes are like giant rocky bathtubs, connected by pipes (rivers and streams) that keep water, oxygen, and nutrients flowing in and out. A bog is like a SEALED bathtub with no water exchange so it becomes stagnant. A FEN is somewhere in betwen a lake and a bog. It is like a bathtub that has LEAKY sides (so ground water flows in) and a leaky DRAIN ( so water flows out).
Black spruce, one of the first, cold resistant trees to follow the retreat of the glaciers, is one of the best fen and bog dwellers to grow here. Peat, (dead vegetation) tends to accumulate also in it rathre decompose because the conditions are inhospitable to bacteria and most fungi. Sometimes this peat can be many meters thick. The stringy roots of the Blue Spuce intertwine through the spongy MAGNUM MOSS mat and it survives on a minimum of nutrients, growing slowly, managing to sprout only their branches. Magnum moss can absorb up to 200 times its weight in moisture!
How old do you think these trees are? One tree with a diameter of only 5cm., was found to be 78 years old! Now that folks is a SUPER-SPRUCE
Interesting NOTE: In Europe people have actually died in bogs and fens, and their bodies have been found in perfect condition hundreds of years later
Info gleaned from the Ontario Provincial Parks pamphlet guide.
Location: Taken on the Fen late in the evening, in Blue Lake Provincial Park in Northern Ontario, Canada...HDR enhanced, hand held￿1 RAW image blending 3 exposures￿tone curved in Photomatix Pro 4.1.3￿Further enhanced in Corel Paintshop Pro x3

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September 20th, 2014

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