Is there any image more iconic of the Deep South than the sight of Spanish moss drooping lazily from a live oak? The gentle sway of the long, gray strands whispers to us of times long gone and people and places faded and gently tucked into memories.

Because Spanish moss typically grows in humid, southern locales, its mystique is often associated with Southern Gothic imagery, along with graveyards and crumbling mansions. It can beckon beautifully as in the movie "Passion Fish" or be a foreboding harbinger as in "Swamp Thing."

It can be both beautiful and eerie at the same time and thus has made large contributions to both literature and film making. Canadian songwriter and singer Gordon Lightfoot wrote a ballad entitled "Spanish Moss."

One folklore tale involves a woman of great beauty — of either Spanish or Indian descent — with flowing raven hair. When she dies, the story goes, her lover places her long hair on a live oak tree, where it turns gray and spreads from tree to tree across the South.

But just what is this alluring living symbol of our region that so tenaciously beckons us to wonder? Spanish moss is a fibrous gray/green epiphyte, which absorbs necessary nutrients like calcium and water from the air and rainfall and can be found dripping from trees in the southeastern United States and Mexico, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Central and South America, the West Indies and even Australia.

Epiphytes are plants that live on other plants, but are non-parasitic. They attach themselves to their host plants for support and as a means to reach more sunlight. It turns out that Spanish moss is neither Spanish nor a moss, but rather a bromeliad, a perennial herb that is a member of the pineapple family, whose probable origin is Central or South America.

Spanish moss and other epiphytes such as begonias, bromeliads, orchids and ferns comprise about 10 percent of all plant species. Since Spanish moss has no roots in the ground, it often hangs in large beard like silvery gray masses from the live oaks it loves and even on telephone poles.

Even though folk tales claim otherwise, Spanish moss is not parasitic or structurally intertwined with its host. It takes in carbon dioxide and rainwater for the process of photosynthesis through tiny hair-like scales that cover its threadlike leaves and long, slender stems.

It absorbs nutrients from dust, solvents in rainwater or from decaying organic matter around its aerial roots. Rarely, tiny yellow flowers may appear.

Spanish moss covers the trunks and branches of trees with its gray strands that call to mind lichens. The young plant attaches itself to the bark of the tree with its roots. As the slender stems grow, their lower parts die. Most often, the plants multiply vegetatively by pieces of the stems, but they can also reproduce by seeds that are covered with hairs and are carried by the wind.

Contrary to widespread belief, Spanish moss is not a parasite like mistletoe, which leaches nutrients from its host tree. It is mostly benign, although it can act as a wind catcher and help a hurricane drop a tree. While it rarely kills trees, the moss can lower their growth rate by reducing the amount of sunlight to the tree's own leaves.

The northern limit of Spanish moss' natural range in our country is Virginia, although small strains have been found in coastal Delaware and Maryland. Spanish moss prefers a warm climate and a relatively high humidity in which it thrives. In our part of the country, our live oaks and bald cypress provide favorable hosts because their high rates of mineral leaching (magnesium, potassium and phosphorus) provide an abundant supply of nutrients to the plant. It can also establish homes in our sweetgums, crape myrtles, other oaks and even pines.

Although several feet of moss can hang beguilingly from a tree limb and look particularly lovely when they catch the late day sun or wave in the breeze, Spanish moss has had a history of practical uses in the South. In the Deep South, the moss was once harvested for use as stuffing in car seats and mattresses.

Today, it is used as mulch, in floral arrangements and some say, as stuffing for voodoo dolls. Birds and squirrels like to use Spanish moss in their nests. The plant has a reputation for harboring chiggers, but this is only true when the moss falls to the ground where the pests can climb on.

So whether you think of this epiphyte as sensual or sinister, there is nothing lovelier than a strong-limbed live oak tree fairly dripping with lush green-gray filaments of Spanish moss. It seems to epitomize the romantic notions of southern gentility along with a gently rocking chair on a porch, cool afternoon breezes and a glass of sweet tea.