Spanish Moss

Description:

Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) is a flowering plant that grows upon larger trees, commonly the Southern Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) or Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum) in the southeastern United States. The plant's specific name usneoides means "resembling Usnea", and it indeed closely resembles its namesake Usnea, also known as beard lichen, but in fact Spanish moss is not biologically related to either mosses or lichens. Instead, it is an angiosperm in the family Bromeliaceae (the bromeliads) that grows hanging from tree branches in full sun or partial shade. Formerly this plant has been placed in the genera Anoplophytum, Caraguata, and Renealmia.[2] Its natural range is from Virginia Beach, Virginia in the southeastern United States to Argentina, growing wherever the climate is warm enough and has a relatively high average humidity. It has been introduced to similar locations around the world, including Hawaii and Australia. The plant consists of a slender stem bearing alternate thin, curved or curly, heavily scaled leaves 2–6 cm (0.79–2.4 in) long and 1 mm (0.039 in) broad, that grow vegetatively in chain-like fashion (pendant) to form hanging structures up to 6 m (240 in)[3] in length. The plant has no aerial roots [3] and its flowers are tiny and inconspicuous. It propagates both by seed and vegetatively by fragments that blow on the wind and stick to tree limbs, or are carried by birds as nesting material.

Habitat:

Southeastern U.S. in humid areas.

Notes:

Due to its propensity for growing in humid southern locales like Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Eastern North Carolina, southeastern Virginia, South Carolina, east and south Texas, and Alabama, the plant is often associated with Southern Gothic imagery. In the southeastern United States, the following tale is told: As the story goes; there was once a traveler who came with his Spanish fiancée in the 1700s to start a plantation near the city of Charleston SC. She was a beautiful bride-to-be with long flowing raven hair. As the couple was walking over the plantation sight [sic] near the forest, and making plans for their future, they were suddenly attacked by a band of Cherokee who were not happy to share the land of their forefathers with strangers. As a final warning to stay away from the Cherokee nation, they cut off the long dark hair of the bride-to-be and threw it up in an old live oak tree. As the people came back day after day and week after week, they began to notice the hair had shriveled and turned grey and had begun spreading from tree to tree. Over the years the moss spread from South Carolina to Georgia and Florida. To this day, if one stands under a live oak tree, one will see the moss jump from tree to tree and defend itself with a large army of beetles.[6]