Danes Moss Nature Reserve Danes Moss Nature Reserve Danes Moss Nature Reserve is a nature reserve south of Macclesfield, Cheshire, England. A Site of Special Scientific Interest, it is managed by the Cheshire Wildlife Trust. Danes Moss is a lowland raised bog, a rare and threatened habitat in the United Kingdom. The SSSI citation describes it as "the largest example in Cheshire of a cut-over raised mire...a valuable example of a habitat now rare in lowland England", noting that the peat is up to deep, a substantial thickness. Seven species of "Sphagnum" moss are found here. Locally uncommon plants include round-leaved sundew ("Drosera rotundifolia"),
Moss Antarctica and Russia, and a case is put forwards for Carboniferous mosses. It has further been claimed that tube-like fossils from the Silurian are the macerated remains of moss calyptræ. Mosses also appear to evolve 2–3 times slower than ferns, gymnosperms and angiosperms. Recent research show that ancient moss could explain why the Ordovician ice ages occurred. When the ancestors of today's moss started to spread on land 470 million years ago, they absorbed CO from the atmosphere and extracted minerals by secreting organic acids that dissolved the rocks they were growing on. These chemically altered rocks in turn reacted