When we left Wilmington in 2017, I was ready to go.
Wilmington had changed. A lot.
It had gotten too big for its britches, and I was ready to get away from the traffic, the crowds, the people who had moved in by the thousands, and the cost of living that seemed to climb every time I turned around.
But I knew I would be homesick.
I knew I’d miss Mama. I’d miss the smell of salt in the air. I’d miss oyster roasts and watching folks shag in the beach bars.
What I didn’t expect was to miss the things I had never really thought about at all.
The background stuff.
Like Spanish moss.
It’s funny because I never thought of myself as someone who didn’t notice Spanish moss. Of course I noticed it. You couldn’t grow up around the Cape Fear and not notice it.
It was just there.
Hanging from the live oaks around Airlie Gardens. Draped across trees in old cemeteries downtown. Swaying in the breeze — or sometimes seemingly swaying when there wasn’t enough wind to move anything else.
It was part of the scenery.
One of those little signs that told you you were back in Southeastern North Carolina before you ever saw a road sign. The trees started growing beards.
But noticing something and missing something are two entirely different things.
I didn’t understand that until I moved somewhere it didn’t grow.
And the more I’ve thought about it, the more fascinating Spanish moss becomes.
First of all, it isn’t Spanish.
And it isn’t moss.
It’s Tillandsia usneoides, a flowering bromeliad that’s actually related to the pineapple. It’s an epiphyte — an air plant — which means it uses a tree for somewhere to hang on, but it doesn’t actually feed off the tree.
It doesn’t have roots that burrow into the bark and steal nutrients. It doesn’t suck water out of the branch.
It just hangs there.
Those tiny gray scales covering the plant collect moisture from rain, fog and even the air around it. When they’re wet, they can give the plant a greener appearance. When they’re dry, it goes right back to that familiar silvery gray.
I never knew any of that growing up.
I just knew sometimes it looked green and sometimes it looked gray.
I never thought to ask why.
There’s something almost funny about missing a plant that doesn’t even need soil to survive when you’re the one who spent so much time feeling uprooted.
Spanish moss is a Coastal Plain plant through and through. Around North Carolina, it’s most at home along the coast and in the low woods, swamps and maritime forests around places like Wilmington, Southport, Lake Waccamaw and the Cape Fear region.
You’ll see it draped over live oaks, water oaks and bald cypress, with the occasional pine getting in on the act.
It becomes less common as you move inland, although there are pockets farther west where the conditions are just right.
And apparently, it’s not just the cold that keeps it closer to the coast.
It’s moisture.
That thick, heavy, can’t-keep-your-hair-straight coastal humidity matters.
Even in the drier longleaf pine country around Wilmington, Spanish moss can find a way to hang on, particularly around waterways. The Cape Fear, Brunswick and Northeast Cape Fear rivers help create the kind of humid little pockets it likes.
It’s particular about where it lives.
I suppose I can relate.
A single strand can grow surprisingly long — sometimes reaching twenty feet — and the mature plant doesn’t have roots at all.
It just hangs there.
It reproduces through tiny yellow-green flowers and, more commonly, by pieces breaking off and finding their way to another tree. Sometimes the wind carries them. Sometimes a bird does the work.
And despite what I heard growing up, Spanish moss isn’t a parasite.
It isn’t killing the tree.
If it gets especially thick and heavy, it can weigh down weak branches or shade the leaves underneath, which is why some people thin it out.
But on a healthy tree?
It’s mostly just along for the ride.
And somehow, it makes the tree look more Southern.
Like the tree wasn’t quite dressed properly until somebody threw a little Spanish moss over its shoulders.
It isn’t just pretty, either.
All kinds of little creatures make use of it. Birds such as the northern parula and yellow-throated warbler build nests in it, and bats have been known to roost in the thick clumps.
I always heard it was full of chiggers.
I believed it.
I spent years avoiding the stuff like it was going to reach down out of the trees and get me.
Turns out that’s mostly a myth.
Chiggers live in grass and other vegetation closer to the ground. Spanish moss that’s still hanging in a tree isn’t exactly the chigger-infested horror story I was led to believe.
I still wouldn’t grab a giant handful of it bare-handed, though.
Some things stick with you whether they’re technically true or not.
And Spanish moss has been useful around here for a whole lot longer than I ever realized.
Native peoples used it for things like bedding, padding and medicine. During the Civil War, it was twisted into rope.
Later, it became a commercial product.
The outer part of the plant could be left to break down, leaving behind the tough inner fiber, which was used for mattresses, cushions and even automobile upholstery.
These days, we’re more likely to see it used in wreaths, crafts or as a decorative covering around plants.
And if you’re bringing some inside, it’s probably worth making sure you aren’t bringing half the ecosystem with it.
Because Southerners have never been particularly good at leaving a mystery alone.
Naturally, Spanish moss has its legends.
There are stories about a Spanish soldier whose beard became tangled in the branches while chasing a woman who didn’t want him.
There are stories about a bride whose hair was cut off and thrown into a tree by a jealous rival.
There are probably another dozen versions I’ve never heard.
None of them seem to agree.
Which feels appropriate for a plant that isn’t Spanish, isn’t moss and never asked to become part of anybody’s folklore.
But that’s how you know something belongs to a place.
People stop seeing it as a plant and start making stories about it.
I didn’t think about any of that when I was growing up.
Spanish moss was just there.
The same way the marsh smell was just there.
The same way the sound of Mama hollering for me to come inside for supper was just there.
I didn’t have brothers or sisters for her to holler at.
I had that voice all to myself.
You don’t think much about the background of your life while you’re living in it.
You just assume it’s going to be there tomorrow.
Then one day you move somewhere else, and you realize the background has changed.
We’re inland now.
The trees here don’t wear anything.
They just stand there — tall, bare-branched and respectable — like they’ve never once considered growing a beard.
I don’t dislike it here.
But every time I’m driving east out of the Sandhills and heading toward Wilmington, there’s a moment when the landscape starts to change.
And then I see it.
The first long gray curtains hanging from the live oaks.
Spanish moss.
And something in me loosens.
I don’t need a sign telling me where I am.
There it is.
Home.
Still dressed the way I remember it.
