Until more than 20 years ago I hadn't realized that mosses differ greatly in appearance. My first summer in Alaska I worked at a wilderness lodge. I worked a split shift which gave me lots of roaming time.

One of the things I came up with that was popular with tourists (who were flown in for several hours for dinner in waves of 25 or so, four or five times a day) was a large basket that I lined with moss that I gathered and then inserted mushrooms of amazing colors and shapes and sizes, colors ranging from browns and tans to pinks and lavenders that I found in the woods surrounding the wilderness compound. The only one I didn't pick was the Amanita, for fear that some cognition-impaired person would break off a piece and pop it in his or her mouth. But I found an amazing assortment of 'shrooms, from fingertip sized thin stalked fairies to the broad umbrella shaped ones to huge 'bear bread'.

The mosses varied also, from masses of tiny lobelets to broad flat-topped leaflets and from the palest, most delicate greens to brilliant emerald.