Britain's Brilliant Bogs

This unique habitat, millennia in the making, provides a home for numerous rare flora and fauna and is, at last, being recognised for its many benefits, reports Mark Griffiths

- Mark Griffiths

In the reign of Henry VIII, a new word became established in our language. The English adapted it from bogach, ‘the soft one’, the term for sodden peatland in both Scottish Gaelic and Irish. The new word was, of course, ‘bog’. Within a few decades, it supplanted what, for more than 600 years, had been England’s standard name for both the peaty habitat and the plant that gave rise to it: ‘moss’.

That moss was, and still is, springy, sponge-like Sphagnum. Britain is home to 34 Sphagnum species, an impressive 10% of the world total for this genus; of these, five are especially important in making and maintaining our peatlands. Often, bogs are composed of several Sphagnum species, each with distinctive characteristics that fit it to a particular spot or niche, such as a peak or a hollow. Collectively, these communities of cousins become capable of wonders, transforming vast, acidic and saturated barrens into the shin-high equivalents of rainforest, and ensuring their perpetuity.