Stag's-horn Clubmoss
Lycopodium clavatum
Eating this will make you ill. Listed here so you can recognise and avoid it.
Not a moss but a primitive spore-bearing plant. Wiry stems creep across the ground and root as they go, densely clothed in narrow leaves that each taper to a fine white hair. Upright shoots carry paired yellow-green cones on long stalks, the stag's horns of the name. It has no food use; the dry spores were once collected commercially as lycopodium powder.
Acid, free-draining ground on heaths, upland grassland and mountain slopes, often among heather or mat-grass, and on bare disturbed soil in quarries and on roadside banks. Mainly northern and upland in Britain and Ireland; most lowland sites have been lost.
The stems and cones contain alkaloids including lycopodine and clavatine, and should not be eaten. The spores are not toxic in themselves, but as a loose powder they are a recognised trigger for asthma and for skin, eye and nose irritation. A declining species: leave it where it grows.
Always use more than one reference to confirm a plant. You are responsible for what you choose to forage.
Long runners across the ground
The main stems trail over the surface for a metre or more, rooting at intervals, with short upright side branches only 5-15cm tall. Clubmosses that form neat erect tufts with no runners are a different genus.
Cones carried in pairs on a bare stalk
Two cylindrical yellow-green cones, each 2-5cm long, sit at the top of a long stalk that is almost leafless. Cones held singly and directly on the shoot tip, without a stalk, point elsewhere.
Shoots cylindrical, like a bottlebrush
Leaves are arranged in spirals all the way round the stem, so a shoot is round in cross-section and bristly. Flattened shoots with leaves in four ranks, often blue-green, are Alpine Clubmoss.
Every leaf tipped with a white hair
Each narrow leaf, 3-5mm long, ends in a fine translucent hair point. With a hand lens it is unmistakable; at arm's length it gives the whole shoot a faint greyish cast. This is the decisive test, as no other clubmoss native to Britain carries it.
Updated 2026-08-14T19:27:08.913Z · Added 2026-08-14T17:18:33.931Z
Part of the shared Foragers Log catalogue · Other