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Environment


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May 26, 2009

Oregon preserves rare patch of peat

By ERIC MORTENSON
The Oregonian

WEST LINN, Ore. — It's like walking on a waterbed. The ground — or more accurately, the mat — gently sinks, bobs and quivers with every step.

Pause a second to take this in. You're walking on a carpet of interwoven, bright green, peat moss that is 12 to 30 inches thick. Water oozes in every depression. Graceful spiraea shrubs and twirling buckbean plants spring from the peat, their roots eternally wet. Grassy clumps of inflated sedge fill the spaces in between, while thin coils of native blackberries snake where they can.


 
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