Nuggets of News Blog 

Anyone who prospects for gold knows how elusive it can be. Even when you’re for certain on “good ground,”  you can end the day with not much to show for your efforts. On the other hand, you may have a really great day and recover some of the shiny stuff, only to return to the same spot at a later date and find nothing. Often, the amount of gold you recover changes when you use a different piece of equipment or a different accessory. Sometimes it’s the weather that exposes or releases gold after a flood or storm. The environment can change, but sometimes the positive difference can be new places to look for gold. Besides hiding in the usual places in streams and on dry land— in crevices, behind boulders, in the roots of plants and trees, in tailings piles — have you ever considered looking for gold in MOSS?  Yes, the kind of ordinary moss that thrives in wet conditions!

Mosses are small flowerless plants that usually grow in dense green clumps in shady moist places. That might be the forest floor, or on trees and rocks along the banks of a waterway.  Moss is seedless and only grows roots shallow enough to attach itself to surfaces where it will thrive.  Moss doesn’t have a root like a flower has, but it does have root-like structures that attach it to the host rock. These structures are known as rhizoids. Instead of sucking up moisture through the roots, moss collects rain and stream water that runs over top of them. It may also collect fine gold in the same way.

If you’ve visited a particular stream at various times of the year, you know that water levels can vary greatly. Sometimes water completely covers mossy rocks that are along the banks, other times when the water level is low, the moss is exposed and dries out in the sun. Have you ever considered processing that ordinary moss for fine gold?  It doesn’t sound too crazy when you think about gold being heavier than water and how it hides under boulders and rocks. So why couldn’t fine gold collect in moss as well?  The next time you see moss growing along a gold-bearing waterway, try processing that moss (and all the dirt and sand and — hopefully — GOLD) that is mixed in with it. If you don’t have a convenient gold vacuum such as a Vac Pac, try scraping the moss into a bucket. Then break it up to release the dirt from the roots. Once you work the dirt and sand out of the moss, pan that material. Depending on the number of rocks located along any given waterway, you may find plenty of moss to work in addition to sluicing or panning in that river. Give it a try. You may just recover some of that elusive gold that would ordinarily gets overlooked by most prospectors.  Good luck!