For gardeners, it is a handy natural material which absorbs excess moisture like a sponge – particularly helpful when potting orchids and hanging baskets or to be mixed into soil to help stop water simply pouring away.

While for scientists keeping an eye on the climate crisis, sphagnum moss is nature’s own weapon; a crucial component in absorbing carbon, locking it away and creating peatlands for the future.

But in November 1914, as Britain marched to war and fears grew over the scale and impact of horrific injuries sustained on the frontline, sphagnum moss was about to play a vital role in the war effort.

It would be thanks to two Edinburgh gentlemen – one a surgeon, the other a botanist – that across the country land armies of volunteers were sent to work, trudging through bogs to gather precious sphagnum moss.

Cleaned, dried and delivered to war hospitals, clumps of moss plugged wounds, absorbing up to 20 times its own weight – whether it was blood, pus, wound exude or lymph fluid - and with natural antiseptic properties which helped heal and prevent infection.

According to a new publication that reflects on the life, achievements and a unique woodland tribute to eminent botanist Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour, the Great War was just a few months old when he joined Edinburgh Royal Infirmary surgeon Charles Cathcart in proposing a potential solution to the shortage of sterile dressings for wounded soldiers.

Using their combined knowledge of medicine and plants, they pointed out that clean, effective wound dressings could be found growing in bogs up and down the land – a suggestion that went on to save countless lives and prevent suffering on a massive scale.

Balfour, Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh at the time, redirected resources to help identify dozens of locations where S. papillosum and S. palustre – the two types of moss he identified as being most effective – flourished.

With a list of boggy areas drawn up by his colleagues at the RBGE, calls were made across the land for volunteers to collect and dry sphagnum which could then be sent to the battlefield and hospitals.

Balfour was knighted for helping to rally a wartime ‘moss army’, which by 1918 had led to over one million sphagnum moss dressings being used in British hospitals every month.

Tragically, however, while the work he carried out with Cathcart avoided the heartbreak of loss for many families, it would not save the life of his only son, Lieutenant Isaac Bayley Balfour, who perished at the Dardanelles in June, 1915.

Although Balfour’s work with Cathcart was crucial in the care of wounded soldiers, according to David Gray, Senior Horticulturist at Benmore Botanic Garden, it was just one element of a life devoted to understanding and sharing the power of plants.

Having followed in his father’s footsteps as 9th Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Balfour went on to completely transform the Edinburgh site, creating a botanical institute, redeveloping their garden’s layout, constructing new laboratories and improving the scientific facilities.

While his other key achievement would be a decade long search for a new botanic garden climatically suited to a rising collection of south east Asian specimens arriving on Scottish shores.

“He was a visionary,” says Gray, whose book, Cherished Plan, focuses on how Balfour’s achievements were celebrated with the construction of a charming memorial hut at Benmore Botanic Garden, near Dunoon.

“He was a moderniser and reformer, he was founder of the modern botanic garden and he realised the importance of public gardens and the importance of education.

“He was also a forestry campaigner, who wanted to reforest Scotland for economic, environmental and education reasons.”

Years ahead of his time, Balfour had a deep understanding of the vital role woodlands play not only in capturing carbon, air and soil quality, but also in aiding mental wellbeing, peace and calm.

He was 23 when he became a member of the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society, and as President campaigned for State-organised forests, pushing an argument that neglect of forestry meant missed economic opportunities.

“At the end of last Ice Age there was a gradual recolonisation of the country by woodland species; around 70% of Scottish land mass was covered by woodland and forest,” says Gray. “But by the Middle Ages there was just 4% left.

“That chronic reduction was partly human intervention, partly grazing and partly climate change.

“Balfour saw the need to reforest in order to offset over-harvesting. But he was also an early campaigner in what we would today call environmentalism.”

Balfour was acutely aware of the role woodlands have in regulating air temperature and improving soil quality and became a prime mover for the establishment of a forestry commission in 1919.

Adds Gray: “He said, ‘…the direct influence of tree-growth upon climate is no mere superstition… like all green plants, trees exercise, through the process of carbon-assimilation, a purifying effect upon the air … forests reduce the extremes of temperature of the air; they protect and control the water flow from the soil’.

“That was in 1894, but it could have been said today. Balfour saw the economic benefits and the great need for trees on a global basis.”

Balfour had already identified a west coast site for a new botanic garden when his health began to fail. He died in 1922 aged 69, before he was able to see Benmore Botanic Garden fully established following a gift of the land from Harry George Younger, of the Younger brewing family.

Such were Balfour’s achievements, that a simple stone plaque in a wall was not deemed sufficient memorial tribute. Instead, Scotland’s leading architect of his age, Sir Robert Lorimer, was engaged to create a memorial resthouse at Puck’s Glen, a mixed woodland on the Benmore estate with a narrow gorge, tumbling waterfalls, shallow pools and arched bridges.

The octagonal wooden hut reflected Lorimer’s attraction to the Arts and Crafts movement and his own interest in the use of home timber. Tiled with western red cedar, panelled with wood from the estate, it featured a figure of Puck on the roof, a fireplace and chimney, and was positioned in a location designed to lure visitors to enjoy the woodland and its views.

Later relocated to a more accessible site, along with its avenue of giant Redwoods and rhododendrons, the hut is one of Benmore Botanic Garden’s most visited spots.

Gray concludes: “Puck’s Hut, conceived and delivered as a personal tribute, is representative in many ways of the much wider campaign and active debate over many generations to encourage tree planting and reforestation within Scotland.

“It is a modest structure of national significance. The garden at Benmore remains an integral part of Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour’s cherished plan.”

Cherished Plan, The Story of Puck’s Hut at Benmore by David Gray is published by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh