Alpine shrubs are the low ones, the tough ones, the ones that grow where no tree can survive. They are the mini forests of the high places, the green blankets on the grey stone. And there was once an alpine shrub that grew taller than any alive today – a shrub with tiny, moss-like leaves so densely packed that it formed a thick, spongy carpet over the rocks. It was the lost giant mossy heath, and it is gone. Density and cold tolerance made it special. A 50-centimetre shrub in the alpine zone is a giant – a dense, moss-like mat that covered the stones, holding moisture, trapping heat, providing shelter for the small creatures of the high places. Its leaves were tiny, scale-like, packed so tightly that you could not see the stems. The whole plant looked like a thick, green carpet thrown over the mountain. It built the alpine soil. In the harsh alpine environment, soil is precious – a thin layer of organic matter over rock, easily eroded. The lost giant mossy heath captured wind-blown dust, held moisture from melting snow, and added its own decaying leaves to the ground. It was the engineer of the alpine heath, the plant that made it possible for other plants to grow. Its dense mats provided shelter for alpine insects, mites, and lizards. Its roots held the thin soil in place. It was the heart of the alpine heathland. It flowered in summer, producing small, white, bell-shaped flowers that fed alpine insects. Its seeds were tiny, dispersed by wind. It grew slowly – a few centimetres per year – and a 50-centimetre shrub might be a century old. That strategy works when the mountain is stable. It fails when the grazers arrive and the climate warms. Introduced grazers and climate warming destroyed it. European settlers introduced goats, chamois, and thar to the mountains. These animals love alpine shrubs. They ate the leaves, trampled the mats, tore up the roots. A slow-growing shrub that takes a century to reach full size cannot survive annual grazing. At the same time, the climate warmed. The alpine zone began to shrink. The lost giant mossy heath, adapted to extreme cold, could not survive in the milder conditions that crept up the mountain. Its range contracted, then disappeared. By the 1910s, it was gone. The last patches were probably eaten by a goat or withered in a warmer spring. No one knew they were the last. The smaller alpine shrubs survived. The mountain neinei, the snowberry, the hebes – they are lower-growing, more adaptable, able to survive in a wider range of conditions. They are the survivors, the ones that kept their heads down. But the lost giant mossy heath is extinct. A few pressed specimens in a herbarium, a few pollen grains in a core sample, and the memory of a shrub that used to cover the alpine heathlands, a mossy carpet on the mountain. The mini forest ghost has faded. The goats came. The climate warmed. And the mossy heath dried to dust.