Plantwatch: is sphagnum the most underrated plant on Earth?

Sphagnum is probably the most underrated plant on Earth. This humble little moss makes up the bulk of our peat bogs and holds up to 20 times its weight in water. That makes boglands huge sponges that store water, slowing its flow and helping prevent flooding downstream.

In fact, sphagnum is so absorbent it was used as a medical dressing for wounds in the first world war. And when sphagnum turns into peat over thousands of years it locks away vast amounts of carbon, at least a third of all the carbon on land.

But much of our peatland has been drained, degraded and dried out. The moorland fires in last summer’s drought caught ablaze at terrifying speed and Saddleworth Moor outside Manchester was ablaze for three weeks, leaving plants scorched and releasing vast amounts of greenhouse gases – and the fires are still smouldering underground, possibly for years, even when it rains.

Peatlands are being restored in places, such as the Peak District, where the Moors for the Future Partnership is blocking drainage channels to hold more water on the moors, and then inoculated with plugs of sphagnum embedded in gel, or pellets of the moss spores sprayed onto the ground. But there is no one magic bullet to restoring peatlands and various strategies are being tried out.