The gathering of the crowsfoot was an annual Christmas season tradition across Pennsylvania.

Early each December, usually on a Sunday, when the men weren’t occupied in hunting for deer, families bundled up for a trek to the forest, where they plucked up long strands of a ground-trailing evergreen commonly known as crowsfoot or ground pine that would become Christmas decoration around their doors and windows and in wreaths.

A few notes on that sentence: Until recently deer hunting in Pennsylvania was almost exclusively a male pursuit. Decembers were generally colder until late in the 20th century, before climate change was truly felt by the average Pennsylvanian. And the environmental impact of removing large amounts of a plant that seemed inexhaustible in its carpeting of the forest floor was not a widely known consequence at the time.

Although crowsfoot clubmoss exists as a distinct species — Lycopodium digitatum — which today is more commonly known as fan clubmoss, the basketfuls and bagfuls of crowsfoot collected for yuletide décor across Pennsylvania could have been any of a dozen or so species of clubmoss that commonly grows or grew in the state.

Other common Pennsylvania names for crowsfoot are trailing pine and running cedar.

Today two species of clubmoss — mountain clubmoss (Huperzia selago) and fir clubmoss (Diphasiastum sabinifolium) are officially listed as extirpated from Pennsylvania, while two others — rock clubmoss (Huperzia prorphila) and foxtail clubmoss (Lycopodiella alopecuroides) — are listed as state-endangered in Pennsylvania.

Other species have started to recover after the practice of family after family harvesting dozens of feet of a plant that grew about 1 foot each year — at the time, it seemed to be in endless supply — has largely become a remnant of Christmases past. But many one-time gatherers of the plant have noticed that favored locations for the activity are no longer home to the evergreen. In addition to indiscriminate harvesting of the plant, the open tree canopy of modern Pennsylvania forests is not as hospitable to clubmoss, and former forests that are now housing or commercial developments have very little of the plants.

Overall clubmoss is not as common as it once was across the state.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, clubmoss is an ancient family of plants. “Over 390 million years ago the ancestors of today’s clubmoss towered to the height of 100 feet.”

Clubmosses today are low-growing perennial evergreens that grow in thick patches of many individual plants connected by horizontal stems that run aboveground through the leaf litter or below ground. The roots of the plant are shallow. And the low, upright, branching greens bear a resemblance to tiny conifer trees or clusters of bird feet.

Like ferns, clubmosses are non-flowering, vascular plants. They reproduce sexually with spores, not seeds. The spores develop on club-like structures called strobili.

Those spores have a high oil content and when dry are quite flammable. Known as vegetable powder or witch meal, the powder was used as flash powder in early photography, in early fireworks, as flash powder in the theater and even as a primer in early muskets.

The first working internal combustion engine, in 1807, was powered by lycopodium powder from those spores to propel a small boat against the current of France’s River Saone.

Lycopodium powder has been used as a base for cosmetics, a coating for pills and suppositories, powder for collecting fingerprints, a stabilizer for ice cream, and a non-stick coating for latex gloves and condoms.

Clubmoss also has been used in medicine and as dye, according to an article for Virginia’s Prince William Wildflower Society by Marion Lobstein, who noted, “Clubmoss spores and teas from plant leaves have been used since ancient times in both American Indian and European cultures. Medicinal uses included treating urinary tract problems, diarrhea and other digestive tract problems, relieving headaches and skin ailments, and inducing labor in pregnancy. In some cultures, the spores have been purported to be an aphrodisiac. The spores repel water and have been used as a powder on skin rashes and even on baby bottoms, and to treat wounds. Clubmoss spores once were used by pharmacists in the coating of pills. In both the Americas and Europe, clubmoss plants were used in dyeing fabrics and other items. The plants and/or spores can be used directly or as a mordant (substance to lock in other dyes) in the dyeing process.”