Here at Something Wild we love all things wild (even blackflies !) but sometimes it can be helpful to look beyond a single species and consider how many species interact within a given environment. In our periodic series, New Hampshire’s Wild Neighborhoods, we endeavor to do just that and this time we’re looking at peatlands. Our Sherpa today is Ron Davis, a retired professor of ecology, limnology and wetland science from the University of Maine, Orono. Peatlands, as you might have guessed are classified by the mat of peat at its heart. Peat is formed from dead organic matter (leaves, branches, dead bugs, etc.), but that organic matter is only partly decomposed because there is no oxygen in the mat, or the water that you often find in such locations. The two most prominent kinds of peatlands in New Hampshire are bogs and fens. Davis explains that, “bogs are rather infertile environments. The plants that grow in them barely hold on and eke out an existence and grow very, very slowly.”