Red Moss is one of only four raised bogs of sphagnum moss surviving in the Lothian region and a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
Bogs even have distinctive insects; English bogs give a home to a yellow fly called the hairy canary fly (Phaonia jaroschewskii), and bogs in North America are habitat for a butterfly called the bog copper (Lycaena epixanthe).
Bog-wood may come from any tree species naturally growing near or in bogs, including oak (Quercus – "bog oak"), pine (Pinus), yew (Taxus), swamp cypress (Taxodium) and kauri (Agathis).
Around the Oligo-Miocene boundary, Castanopsis grew abundantly along rivers and in bogs and swamps of then-subtropical Europe.
Other plants found in cataract bogs are limeseep grass-of-Parnassus (Parnassia grandifolia), Indian paint brush (Castilleja coccinea), stiff cowbane (Oxypolis rigidior), Appalachian bluet (Houstonia serpyllifolia) and northern sundrops (Oenothera tetragona).
During the pre-war years, he was interested in the origin of bogs and published several detailed descriptions of the Dismal and Blackwater Swamps.
Smith has noted a preference for bogs and the edges of woodland pools in hardwood forests, and in oak stands that have an understory of blueberry bushes (Vaccinium species).
Above the semi-improved grassland is some bracken but much of the higher ground is covered in typical Calluna / Erica communities interspersed with large areas of Juncus, Carex and Sphagnum bogs.
Above 3,000 metres elevation, the high mountain forest yields to remote sub-alpine habitats including alpine meadows, conifer forest, tree-fern (Cyathea) grasslands, bogs, and shrubby heaths of Rhododendron, Vaccinium, Coprosma, Rapanea, and Saurauia all quite different from the tropical rain forest that covers most of New Guinea.
By late in the reign of George III much of the original oak forests of England, Scotland, and Ireland had long since been cut down to service the Royal Navy and many of the peat bogs were being mined for use as a source of fuel; with the exceptions of badgers, rabbits, and foxes much of the original fauna that would have inhabited these lands had become extirpated over time.
Salix myrtilloides (swamp willow) is a willow native to boglands in cool temperate to subarctic regions of northeastern Europe and northern Asia from central Norway and Poland eastwards to the Pacific Ocean coasts, with isolated populations further south in mountain bogs in the Alps, Carpathians and Sikhote-Alin mountains.
These bogs support specialised plant species such as insectivorous sundews.
A six kilometer long trail leads through the moorland, over bridges and past bogs to highlands of mountain pine (Pinus mugo), whence the entire moor can be viewed.
There are over 50 species of plants and animals that are protected under the Endangered Species Act and more than 150 native trout streams, thousands of acres of wetlands and high mountain bogs, areas of karst terrain, abandoned coal mines and numerous recreational facilities within the Corridor H study area.
In the 1810s Samuel Galton, Jr. showed that bogs could be drained and dressed with clay and other soil, and built Galton's Canal.
Edgeworth's surveying work in Ireland included soundings in the River Inny and the mapping of bogs.