Primary 6 visited Blawhorn Moss with Beechbrae and Scottish National Heritage to find out about the plants that live there. This is what they had to say:
We arrived at Blawhorn Moss on Tuesday 24th October. Sammy, David and Amy took us up there. When we arrived Sammy went through the rules and then we walked through the puddles to the bog! A Labrador even tried to eat us! (Miss Reid says this isn’t quite true!) We got clipboards and some sheets and we had to identify as many plants as we could. We did a bounce test on the solid ground and then on the peat bog to compare. When we were doing it on the peat bog it was vibrating like jelly because it soaks up so much water. When we were on the bog we were talking about what different plants were used for. The plants were heather, sphagnum moss, star moss, sundew and cranberry. We learned that the plants can only grow on the moss because they have adapted to the environment to get all the nutrients they need. The sphagnum moss helps the other plants because it soaks up all the water and gives them the amount of water they need and soaks up the rest. We had to try to identify the plants we had seen to see if we remembered them. Soon after when we went on the bog David got a handful of sphagnum moss and showed us how much water was in it. We measured how far down the peat goes and it was 3 metres. That means the bog had been there for 3000 years! We saw that there used to be a farm and we saw a ruined house. David told us that there was a part of the ground where it went up and down and that was where the farm was. The furrows were where the farmer watered and the ridges were where they planted the crops. We did a game at the end called Bats and Moths, we were blindfolded and tried to catch the moth using echolocation.
We loved our day at Blawhorn Moss. Thanks David, Amy and Sammy!
Since we came back we have been learning about how plants stay alive in the rainforest and how they have adapted to their habitat. We have been linking our learning to plants on Blawhorn Moss!
We’ll be back next week so look out for a further update and some photos!
