A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1467 entries
quaking bog
A quaking bog is a floating mat of vegetation growing across the surface of open water, thick enough to walk on and thin enough to move under you as you do. Sphagnum moss and sedges grow outward from the edge of a pond and knit into a raft, with peat accumulating beneath, and the water underneath can be many feet deep. Step on one and the trees twenty feet away nod.
Etymology
The English name is what it does. The German term is schwingmoor, swinging bog, which is the same observation, and the Scots have quaking qua and shaking moss. English also has quagmire, on this site, built on the same root: the family of words for this ground all descend from the shaking rather than from the wetness.
Notes
The mat is a habitat that exists nowhere else. Because it is fed only by rain and floats clear of the mineral ground below, it is extremely acid and extremely poor, which is where sundews, pitcher plants, bog rosemary, and cranberry live. It is also the classic setting for preservation: bodies, timber trackways, and offerings recovered from northern European bogs come from ground of this kind, where the acid and the absence of oxygen stop decay almost entirely.