13 June 2014 – CFNC Talk on Moss

Posted on 10 June, 2014 by Connecting Country

This Friday (13 June), there will be a special Castlemaine Field Naturalists Club (CFNC) general meeting. Local resident and amateur bryologist Bernard Slattery will be talking about local mosses. Bernard, and another local Cassia Read, launched the FOBIF publication, Mosses of the dry forests in south eastern Australia, to great fanfare two weeks ago.

Bernard writes,

I spent about 65 years not really noticing moss, except as a vaguely dank winter thing. How can a person be so blind? The discovery that things are quite spectacular down there on the ground came by accident, while I was looking for something else, and the experience has taught me that the way we see things, or don’t see them, can be quite mysterious. Maybe it has something to do with an idea Shakespeare was getting at when he talked of the man ‘ who will not see because he does not feel’…in any case, I’ll try to explain how it happened in my case. In the process, I’ll show a few pictures of what happens in the moss world when there’s a fire…the transitions are amazing.

The evening commences at 7.30pm at the Uniting Church Hall, Castlemaine – members and visitors welcome. The book will be available for sale on the night. You can also order it on the FOBIF website. A report about the launch which includes a transcript of the speech Frances Cincotta gave to launch the book is included on the website.