Sphagnum, pH and TDS

[Bogiron]

Are there any Sphagnum moss experts in this forum? I grow CPs and am interested in the sphagnum mosses that grow with them. I visited a bog in New Jersey and it appeared to be many species growing. I took small samples of each species I could find.

I am growing just the living tops in 3 oz cups with a little standing rain water in the bottom. I noticed that the water with the moss turned color after a day. I decided to test the pH and TDS. The rainwater measures 10 ppm but the sphagnum water measures 106 with a pH around 4.

It seems that TDS alone is not an indicator of suitability of water for watering our CPs.

[Aidan]

Everything you ever wanted to know about Sphagnum and probably more...

www.botanik.univie.ac.at/~temsch/basics.html

Sphagnum removes nutrients from water and acidifies it. Two reasons why it provides the ideal environment for many carnivorous plants.

The massive increase in TDS just sounds wrong. You might want to repeat the experiment a few times.

[brokken]

aidan said:

Everything you ever wanted to know about Sphagnum and probably more...

www.botanik.univie.ac.at/~temsch/basics.html

Sphagnum removes nutrients from water and acidifies it. Two reasons why it provides the ideal environment for many carnivorous plants.

The massive increase in TDS just sounds wrong. You might want to repeat the experiment a few times.

At first I only thought all there was to this page was the Basics page, but you're right. A lot of info about moss there!

[Bogiron]

Thanks for the information, Aidan. I seem to rember reading Sphagnum removes just the cations such as Calcium ions that it needs to grow and releasing H+ in their place. So if you had ions of calcium chloride it would produce hydrochloric acid.

Since I used rain water I suspect that the sphagnum was releasing a humic acid type compound. I will definitely do more experiments when I have time and compare amount of light, mass of sphagnum and quantity of water. Since a humic acid would be a dissolved solid it would measure on a TDS meter, right?

[Aidan]

Ya got me! Humic acid chemistry is complex and someone with a greater understanding than I have will need to answer that question for you.