The Beauty of Moss

It’s everywhere – growing in sidewalk cracks, sneaking through your shingles, blossoming on things that we classify as “ugly” or “boring”. And yet we never stop to admire its beautiful green hue, tiny forest of capsules and leaves. Moss could teach us its language and resilience, and yet we ignore it with a dedicated passion. “What could such an ordinary, monotonous plant teach us?” you might ask. Well, you’d be surprised.

n a post by The Guardian, Robin Wall Kimmerer shares her knowledge on moss and how we might take away teachings from it. Robin is an avid bryologist (a bryologist is one who studies mosses and liverworts) and I admire her reverence and passion for which she applies to her work. She published a book on her knowledge, research, and lessons from her studies in Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses.

osses have been used by First Nations peoples for bandages, cloths, fillers in buildings (moss was stuffed into the cracks between logs in buildings to insulate), insulation in clothing, basket materials, and diapers. Women used moss for menstruation as a type of pad, as it is highly absorbent.

As I’ve been reading Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer, I’ve learned so much about the miniature ecosystem under our feet that we so often step past without a glance.

Moss exists in a space between the atmosphere and the earth, in a spot only a few inches above the earth, called the boundary layer. This layer has its own miniscule winds, and moisture can be carried in the tiny breezes. This is how moss thrives – it creates its own world.

As Robin writes in Gathering Moss of how closely resembled moss is to a rainforest, “The interior of a moss clump can be heavily colonized by algae, making it look like a moss-draped rain forest in miniature. Golden disks of single-celled algae rest among the moss leaves. Threads of tiny liverworts coil around the stems like vines on a tree trunk and competing mosses may engulf a stem like a strangler fig. Clinging to the rhizoids [the root-like system common with fungi and some plants] of the moss are colourful spores and pollen grains, evoking the pattern of pastel orchids… The water-filled pocket in a moss leaf can support unique species of … invertebrates that know no other home but the tiny pool along the moss leaves.”

The reproduction of moss is a complicated, often frenzied dance in which the conditions have to be perfect. After a rainfall, the sperm from the “sausage-shaped” tubes in the leaves of the male moss swim through a bridge of raindrops to the female moss’s awaiting eggs. Many of these chances are fruitless – the sperm dies before it reaches the eggs, the sperm’s plans are thwarted from broken raindrops (they must have a seamless path to reach the egg), or even a dry spell with no rain. Many mosses have evolved to bisexuality, ensuring a more successful reproductive rate. Some mosses go without reproduction entirely, cloning themselves instead.

It’s surprising to finally realize that, after all this time, the pesky groundcover that seems so dull and ordinary is actually a forest under your feet. Moss, in all its resilient beauty, has many lessons that we can learn from, if only we make the time to pause, bend down, and listen.

From Gathering Moss: “It took a flight across the equator, a perilous crossing on the Andes and three days down the river in a dugout canoe to bring me to the heart of the rain forest. But at home I don’t have to go that far to find a shadowy forest full of exotic beings that I’ve never seen before. In a five-minute walk down the path of my garden I can have a handful of moss, and a five-minute walk back to the microscope brings me to the lush interior of the moss forest. There is no word but awe for the biological excess of that place, the profusion of life, vivid and complex beyond our grasp. At every turn of a leaf, there are mysteries. There are life forms here that occur nowhere else on the planet and intricate relationships evolved over eons.

You might take care not to step on them.”