What is moss?

TRACE observations of active regions show a peculiar extreme ultraviolet (EUV) emission over certain plage areas. Termed 'moss' for its spongy, low-lying, appearance, observations and modeling imply that the phenomenon is caused by thermal conduction from 3-5 MK coronal loops overlying the plage: moss is the upper transition region emission of hot coronal loops. The spongy appearance is due to the presence of chromospheric jets or 'spicules' interspersed with the EUV emission elements. High cadence TRACE observations show that the moss EUV elements interact with the chromospheric jets on 10 s time scales. The location of EUV emission in the moss does not correlate well to the locations of underlying magnetic elements in the chromosphere and photosphere, implying a complex magnetic topology for coronal loop footpoint regions. We summarize here the key observations leading to these conclusions and discuss new implications for understanding the structuring of the outer solar atmosphere.