A weathered branch crosses a dim forest scene diagonally.

One branch.
A whole world.

BRANCH.Explore

Let your curiosity wander.Touch the branch.Let life unfold beneath your touch.

LOOK A LITTLE CLOSERA WORLD WITHIN REACH

A fallen branch.
A story still unfolding.

Nothing is happening.
Or so it seems.

At first, just a piece of wood. Yet its bark shelters, its cracks welcome, its substance nourishes. What we call “dead” is still a place for life.

A small beetle crosses the mossy branch.

A forest
within a forest.

A few centimetres are enough to change your perspective. Between the moss fronds, a tiny community lives out of sight.

A world
beneath your feet.

The forest continues.
At a different scale.

WHO LIVES HEREA FEW MILLIMETRES. A WHOLE COMMUNITY.

Invisible to the eye.
Everywhere in the moss.

A moss cushion on old bark in daylight.
Plate I. Moss cushion on dead wood, in daylight.
  1. Fig. 1

    Tardigrade

    0.5 MM

    Water bears climb the wet moss leaves. When the moss dries out, they dry out too, and wait, sometimes for years.

  2. Fig. 2

    Springtail

    2 MM

    Tiny, springing, countless. Springtails graze on fungi and decaying matter, and help turn the wood back into soil.

  3. Fig. 3

    Pseudoscorpion

    3 MM

    A scorpion without a tail, smaller than a grain of rice. It hunts springtails and mites under the bark.

KEEP EXPLORINGDead wood, explained by ONF (FR) ↗The world of mosses (FR) ↗
UNDER THE BARKWHERE THE WOOD TURNS BACK INTO SOIL

A hidden
network.

Old bark covered in pale lichens, a crack running through it.

Plate II. The same bark, seen closer.

Finer than a hair, fungal threads spread through the wood. They digest it slowly and give it back to the soil.

And at night,
some of it glows.

A fallen log in the dark, its fungi glowing green.

AFTER DARK

Switch off
the light.

Move the lamp, then let it rest.Hold your finger down to light the lamp.

The wood glows.

Some fungi make their own light. People have called it foxfire for centuries.

Stay a little.

Some things
only appear
when you stop.

Where the branch lay, a young seedling rises from the soil.

THE SAME BRANCH, OVER THE YEARS

Year 1

The branch has fallen. Moss, lichens and ferns have already moved in.

Winter. Under the snow, the moss holds on and waits.

Fungi soften the wood from within. The bark lets go.

The branch gives way and returns to the ground.

What was a branch is now soil. Something new begins.

SOMETIMES, ALL IT TAKES IS A PAUSE.

Next time,
look again.

Back to the branch