White light shimmers on the horizon – a bright mirage pulling me in. As I draw near, the vision doesn’t end but intensifies as, up close, the cottongrass delivers on its promise. Dozens of gleaming seedheads sway with the breeze, lighting the dark peatland. Sometimes called ghost grass, it is easy to get caught up in the wispy trails that top the stems. The gossamer plumes seem almost otherworldly. Yet its more common name of bog cotton grounds this plant in the wetland home that it is very much a part of.
Here in the Flow Country of blanket bog in north Scotland, it is common cottongrass that I find most often by banks of sphagnum moss and shining bog pools, or hare’s-tail cottongrass stretching out across the peaty moorland.
Developing in cool places with lots of rain, this blanket bog is extensive, though sadly damaged by past drainage and conifer plantation. Ongoing restoration work has increased the water levels in the drained peatlands, and vegetation is recovering, though there is plenty of work still to do. Cottongrass is one of the few plants suited to the wet, acidic conditions of this habitat, and its white crests wave like flags staked in unsteady ground.
While this bog is said to cover the landscape like a blanket, the cottongrass, with its light tufts whipped up like cotton wool balls, seems to offer tiny pillows. Indeed, one of its former uses in parts of England was as stuffing for pillows in place of feathers. In the summer heat, the wide bog covering and soft-headed sedge create a soporific atmosphere. I find myself drifting into the sway of white fluff, the little, low clouds billowing.
It takes the bubbling song of a skylark to rouse me. As the cotton-like heads bob, caught by the breeze and the birdsong, I reach out, bringing my fingers to the frothy peaks. After the high spread of the surrounding mountains and low stretch of the bog, it is refreshing to come right up to something small and immediately tangible. Soft as fleece, the sedge heads brush against skin – a feathery light at my fingertips.
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