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Of the Mosse of Trees

The Description.

TRee Mosse hath certaine things like haires, made up as it were of a multitude of slender leaves, now and then all to be jagged, hackt, and finely carved, twisted and interlaced one in another, which cleave fast to the barkes of trees, hanging downe from the bodies: one of this kinde is more slender and thinne, another more thicke, another shorter, another longer; all of them for the most being of a whitish colour, yet oftentimes there is a certaine one also which is blacke, but lesser and thinner: the most commendable of them all, as Pliny saith, be those that are whitish, then the reddish, and lastly such as be blacke.

The Place.

This Mosse is found on the Oke tree, the white and blacke Poplar tree, the Olive tree, the Birch tree, the Apple tree, the Peare tree, the Pine tree, the wilde Pine tree, the Pitch tree, the Firre tree, the Cedar tree, the Larch tree, and on a great sort of other trees. The best, as Dioscorides saith, is that of the Cedar tree, the next of the Poplar, in which kinde the White and the sweet smelling Mosse is the chiefest; the blackish sort is of no account. Matthiolus writeth, that in Italy that Mosse is sweet which groweth on the Pine tree, the Pitch tree, the Fir tree, and the Larch tree, and the sweetest, that of the Larch tree.

The Time.

Mosse upon the trees continueth all the yeare long.

The Vertues.

Serapio saith, that the wine in which Mosse hath been steeped certain daies, bringeth sound sleep.

It is fit to be used in compositions which serve for sweet perfumes, and that take away wearisomnesse; for which things that is best of all which is most sweet of smell.