Iain MacLeod explains what a bog is, where to find them, what kinds of interesting things you'll find when you get there.
May 16, 2003:
Welcome to Something Wild! I'm Iain MacLeod from the Audubon Society of New Hampshire.
Looking for something to do on a sunny May day? May I suggest a visit to your local bog?
What's a bog? Well, it's like a pond with no water flowing in or out. So, except for rain and run-off, there really isn't any new water that gets into the bog.
That means there aren't many new nutrients or much oxygen, either. So bogs are very acidic, which causes any organic matter to decay very, very slowly. This partially decayed material, which is called peat, gradually fills in the pond.
This peat, when dried, is what you buy as peat moss for your garden. In fact, people have harvested bogs for centuries. In New England, you can still see the trenches in the bog mat where peat was harvested decades ago.
Bogs have a wonderful natural history. Plants have to be pretty tough to survive in bogs, so you have many species that are found there and nowhere else. Two of our most well-known carnivorous plants, pitcher plants and sundew, can be found in New Hampshire bogs. What they can't get from the soil, they get from trapping and eating insects.
Many bogs in New Hampshire are open to the public. Some even have a boardwalk that takes you right onto the bog mat, which is good, because it isn't safe to walk there without one. The best time to go to a bog is now, when rhodora is hard to miss with its brilliant pink blooms, but get down on your hands and knees to appreciate the tiny sundew and feel the bog mat. There's nothing else like it!
Something Wild is a joint production of the Audubon Society of New
Hampshire, New Hampshire Public Radio, and the Society for the
Protection of New Hampshire Forests. For Something Wild, I'm Iain
MacLeod.
If you have a natural history question that you would like answered on Something Wild, email us at somethingwild@ nhpr.org.
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