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Speaker 3: Oh hey, it's the guy on next door who is like,
Speaker 3: does anyone want some zucchinis? Because no one warned him
Speaker 3: that unattended zucchinis can grow to be the size of
Speaker 3: a human baby. Ali Ward back with an instant classic
Speaker 3: episode of Ologies. This is an episode you're gonna listen
Speaker 3: to more than once. I'm going to tell you right now,
Speaker 3: not because the subject matter demands it for comprehension, but
Speaker 3: because it is the very ethos of ologies, all wrapped
Speaker 3: up in the most soothing, mellow audio. Hug you will
Speaker 3: ever lay yours on. It's overlooked beauty, It's following bliss,
Speaker 3: It's Mythbustinger. Okay, let me just run through the things.
Speaker 3: Let's get to the show. So thank you to all
Speaker 3: the supporters. At patreon dot com slash Ologies. You can
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Speaker 3: submit questions. Perhaps hear yours asked in future episodes. Thanks
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Speaker 3: show notes. Tag yourself in hashtagologies. Merch on Instagram will
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Speaker 3: leaves reviews. I read all of them. They help Ologies
Speaker 3: stay at the top of the science charts.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I like cheese Rich, who wrote, not only is information
Speaker 3: put in accessible language, but it also opens up your
Speaker 3: eyes to all the wonderful things there are to know
Speaker 3: and do in the world. Oh, I like cheese Rich.
Speaker 4: You have no idea.
Speaker 3: This is right in line with that. If anyone else
Speaker 3: left a review this week, I one hundred percent read
Speaker 3: it and appreciated it, including some suggestions for future episodes
Speaker 3: on rocks and squirrels and the unhoused crisis appreciated. Okay, briology.
Speaker 3: Brio in Greek straight up means moss, So thank you Greek.
Speaker 4: That was quick.
Speaker 3: So this briologist is perhaps the most beloved in her field.
Speaker 3: She got her bs in botany from Sunni Environmental Science
Speaker 3: and Forestry and a master's and a PhD in botany
Speaker 3: from the University of Wisconsin. She has published numerous papers
Speaker 3: on mosses and plants and traditional ecological knowledge. She is
Speaker 3: a distinguished teaching professor. She covers botany, ethnobotany, indigenous environmental issues.
Speaker 3: She's been a TED speaker. She's an enrolled member of
Speaker 3: the Citizen Potawatami Nation and the author of two huge books,
Speaker 3: The Gorgeous Gathering Moss, a Natural and cultural history of mosses,
Speaker 3: and the New York Times bestselling Braiding Sweet Grass, Indigenous Wisdom,
Speaker 3: Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Many many people
Speaker 3: have suggested and begged that I get her on the show,
Speaker 3: So thank you to brain Picking's own Maria Popova for
Speaker 3: the nudge in her direction. We set up a time
Speaker 3: to meet. Virtually, I listened to this ologist's velvety, soft
Speaker 3: voice via audiobooks so much that I was so nervous.
Speaker 3: I was afraid I'd be too loud or jarring, or
Speaker 3: I'd make an airhorn noise with my mouth. So I
Speaker 3: did my best just to keep calm. And this episode
Speaker 3: is just a gorgeous stroll through the forest floor, an
Speaker 3: eye opening loop, squinting gaze at hidden mysteries, and an intro.
Speaker 4: To your new hero. We cover what is a moss?
Speaker 1: Where do they grow?
Speaker 4: Can you eat them? Should you have one as a
Speaker 4: bath matt?
Speaker 3: Are they soft to nap on? What's up with lichen?
Speaker 3: How to incorporate your native teaching into your science work,
Speaker 3: or how to recognize and appreciate indigenous knowledge without appropriating it?
Speaker 3: And moss smoothies with the moss wonderful briologist Doctor Robin
Speaker 3: Wall Kimmerer.
Speaker 1: After, of course, well there's that.
Speaker 3: And so now you are talking to me from from
Speaker 3: New York right now?
Speaker 1: Yes, I live in upstate New York.
Speaker 4: How are the seasons changing right now?
Speaker 1: Oh, it is just the height of June. I live
Speaker 1: out in farm country and so it's hay making weather.
Speaker 1: So the air is just full of the wonderful scent
Speaker 1: of new cut hay. And wildflowers. It's really sort of
Speaker 1: the peak of photosynthesis right now. So it's pretty lovely.
Speaker 3: I know from reading you know, your books that you've
Speaker 3: you've always been obviously drawn to the outdoors. Do you
Speaker 3: remember some of your first kind of interactions with looking
Speaker 3: at plants and looking at at wild growth.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's really almost impossible for me to
Speaker 1: pinpoint that because I just grew up in the natural world.
Speaker 1: It was always part of my being and part of
Speaker 1: my family experience, and so it's hard to say there
Speaker 1: was a moment when I really connected. But I had
Speaker 1: the benefit of a rural childhood and parents who were
Speaker 1: avid outdoors people and naturalists, and I think that I
Speaker 1: was mostly shaped by these old farm fields that were
Speaker 1: around where I grew up. That meadow kind of array
Speaker 1: of wildflowers and wild strawberries and all of that was
Speaker 1: certainly the formative landscape for me as a naturalist. I'd
Speaker 1: call it my backyard, except it was, you know, the landscape,
Speaker 1: not my yard.
Speaker 4: And what about different plants?
Speaker 3: What drew you to mosses in particular?
Speaker 1: You know, it's a it's an odd story in that
Speaker 1: I've always been, of course drawn to plants. And when
Speaker 1: I went away to college to be a botany major,
Speaker 1: I took every botany class I could get my hands on,
Speaker 1: and there were a lot of them. And the only
Speaker 1: one I didn't take was the ecology of mosses. No, really,
Speaker 1: I left it till the last I thought, oh, really,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just this tiny, little green film. How
Speaker 1: could that be interesting? So I'm really familiar with this
Speaker 1: notion of the overlooked world because I did it myself.
Speaker 1: I was really interested in forest ecology, and so I
Speaker 1: overlooked the masses. But then I took one class in it.
Speaker 1: That moment, I remember it was the first day of
Speaker 1: my Ecology of mosses class, and putting a lens on
Speaker 1: the mosses and seeing a forest in nature, and it
Speaker 1: was love at first sight. Oh so yeah.
Speaker 3: And I remember in gathering moss you mentioned that you
Speaker 3: had kind of a loop, a magnifying glass, and you
Speaker 3: spent some of your some of your money to get
Speaker 3: your own.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I still have it.
Speaker 1: When I think of the innumerable objects I have lost
Speaker 1: in my life, I have never lost my loop.
Speaker 4: And you know, this is.
Speaker 3: Such a This is obviously a stupid question but what
Speaker 3: is a moss For someone who doesn't know, Well, how
Speaker 3: do you even define a moss?
Speaker 1: I'm glad you asked, because when people hear about my
Speaker 1: passion for mosses, they look at me really funny and
Speaker 1: they think, like, you mean that green scum? Like, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't mean green scum. Mosses are the oldest plants
Speaker 1: on the planet. People say they are primitive. Really, they're
Speaker 1: very sophisticated, I think, but they're primitive because they're so
Speaker 1: small and simple. That's why people classify them that way.
Speaker 1: But mosses are members of the plant kingdom, the first
Speaker 1: plants to colonize land three hundred and fifty million years ago.
Speaker 1: When I think about what is a moss, a moss
Speaker 1: is really a miniature forest.
Speaker 3: Did I just purchase a thirteen dollars loop to go
Speaker 3: look at mosses and pretend like I'm in a movie
Speaker 3: called Honey I shrunk the biologist? I most definitely did.
Speaker 4: And are they do?
Speaker 3: They have roots systems that are much different than trees.
Speaker 3: How are they able to cling to so many surfaces?
Speaker 1: Well, that's really the important question, you know, when you
Speaker 1: said what is a moss? Oftentimes the best way to
Speaker 1: answer that is what do mosses not have? Ali They
Speaker 1: don't even have roots, really, no, who are not rooted plants,
Speaker 1: and that's how they can cling. They do have these
Speaker 1: little threadlike structures called rhizoids, which allow them to attach,
Speaker 1: but they're not absorptive the way roots are. They don't
Speaker 1: have the capacity to take up water and nutrients. They're
Speaker 1: really just points of attachment.
Speaker 3: So think of a muscle like a bivalve attaching to
Speaker 3: a rock or a boat. They're not eating through those fibers.
Speaker 3: They're just hunkered down.
Speaker 1: And so when we think about what mosses are, one
Speaker 1: of the ways to characterize them is by what they
Speaker 1: don't have in comparison to all the plants that are
Speaker 1: around us. They don't have roots, they don't have flowers,
Speaker 1: they don't have the xylum and flow them that vascular
Speaker 1: tissue that allows water to be moved within the plant.
Speaker 1: They don't have any of that. And yet they're able
Speaker 1: to occupy virtually every habitat on the planet and endure
Speaker 1: all kinds of different kinds of environments. So they're super simple,
Speaker 1: but in their simplicity is kind of the key to
Speaker 1: their success.
Speaker 3: And so without flowering they reproduce with spores.
Speaker 1: They do yep, just like in higher plants, there are
Speaker 1: females and males, there are eggs and sperm tucked in
Speaker 1: among the little tiny leaves of the moss. And you know,
Speaker 1: like flowering plants, we know about insects moving pollen around
Speaker 1: for fertilization. For mosses, it's they need water for that
Speaker 1: to happen. There has to be a continuous bridge of
Speaker 1: water between male and female for the sperm to swim along,
Speaker 1: sometimes just along the surface of a leaf to go
Speaker 1: find the female.
Speaker 3: So the water acts like the ultimate wingman, just pass
Speaker 3: sing a long sperm like a note and class like, hey,
Speaker 3: h my friend wanted you to have this that boom
Speaker 3: you're pregnant with moss babies.
Speaker 1: And once the sperm does fertilize that egg, yeah, then
Speaker 1: it sends up this little stalk called a sporophyte that
Speaker 1: will puff out clouds of spores that will go off
Speaker 1: and germinate. They don't make seeds, but they work from
Speaker 1: the dispersal of spores.
Speaker 3: And so all of this is happening in miniature. When
Speaker 3: we're taking a walk through the forest and we just
Speaker 3: maybe see a green log and take it for granted.
Speaker 4: All of this drama is happening.
Speaker 1: All of this drama. Yes, yes, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: like anything. The closer you look, the more drama you see.
Speaker 1: And if you start to set aside those notions of
Speaker 1: what mosses don't have and say, okay, I think of
Speaker 1: mosses as real rule breakers in the plant kingdom because
Speaker 1: they live their lives in ways that are so different
Speaker 1: than all of the other plants. But yeah, when you
Speaker 1: start to pay attention, they are successful because of their differences,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 3: Would be the way to say that, Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: where can they grow? You mentioned that they can inhabit
Speaker 3: all these places other plants can't. I'm trying to picture
Speaker 3: like the outer reaches, like where are some of the
Speaker 3: most surprising places mosses have been found?
Speaker 1: One of the mosses can grow pretty much anywhere. The
Speaker 1: only place that they can't tolerate are salty environments. So
Speaker 1: they're not in the ocean, they're not in the seashore,
Speaker 1: but every place else they occur. And we tend to
Speaker 1: think about mosses as like you said, being on a
Speaker 1: wet log. They're in a shady forest, they're next to
Speaker 1: a waterfall or a stream or a bog wet places,
Speaker 1: but one of the most surprising places to find them
Speaker 1: is in the desert. They yeah, yeah, there are mosses
Speaker 1: that live off from morning dew in the desert. That's
Speaker 1: all the water they ever get. So to me, those
Speaker 1: are some of the most surprising and one of the
Speaker 1: beauties of When you ask where do mosses live, there's
Speaker 1: the big answer of everywhere except for marine environments. But
Speaker 1: if we go to smaller to think about the world,
Speaker 1: like a moss, mosses live on surfaces for the most part.
Speaker 1: You know, think about where you see them. They're they're
Speaker 1: on logs, they're on trees, they're on rocks, they're on
Speaker 1: pavement in city mosses mostly they don't live on the soil,
Speaker 1: although some do because they're out competed by the bigger
Speaker 1: flowering vascular plants. So they tuck themselves in on all
Speaker 1: of these surfaces where it doesn't matter if you don't have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's so smart, it's so clever of them. I
Speaker 3: know that we might take them for granted because our
Speaker 3: eyesight just doesn't allow us to kind of identify or
Speaker 3: notice their differences.
Speaker 4: But when you're looking through a loop.
Speaker 3: How are their edges different, and how are their forms
Speaker 3: and structures different?
Speaker 1: Well, they are at the scale of a loop, and
Speaker 1: even at the scale of just being on your knees
Speaker 1: and looking carefully. One moss is as different from the
Speaker 1: next as a oak tree is from a birch tree
Speaker 1: from a pine tree. Their leaves might have toothed edges,
Speaker 1: the leaf might be pleated, the leaf might be round,
Speaker 1: it might be long, it might be like a hair
Speaker 1: like extension. There's tremendous diversity of form within the mosses,
Speaker 1: and that alone is a wonderful introduction to mosses, just
Speaker 1: to see that they have tiny stems and they have
Speaker 1: beautifully arrayed leaves. People think about them as a green film,
Speaker 1: almost like there's nothing structural within it. It's just like
Speaker 1: a green textile or something. But no, they are tiny
Speaker 1: little plants with world leaves and leaves that might be flattened, spiraled.
Speaker 1: There's tremendous diversity of ways to be a moss. And
Speaker 1: that's why I always say to people. People say, oh,
Speaker 1: there's moss on that rock. Really, there's no such thing
Speaker 1: as moss. There are mosses on any given rock there
Speaker 1: might be ten different kinds of moss that until you
Speaker 1: start to look, it just looks like green wallpaper. But
Speaker 1: then when you stop and look, you see that it's
Speaker 1: a whole world.
Speaker 3: And how are all of those different mosses categorized? How
Speaker 3: I know that.
Speaker 4: They don't have a lot of common names.
Speaker 1: True. Unfortunately, mosses within sort of Western natural history, shall
Speaker 1: we say, have been so overlooked that for the most
Speaker 1: part they don't even have common names. Although just and
Speaker 1: there weren't even field guides to them until a few
Speaker 1: years ago, and there are now some nice photographic and
Speaker 1: drawing based field guides and some attempt to put common
Speaker 1: names on them. I'll admit they're not very interesting common names.
Speaker 1: Hooker's branched carpet moss. You know, it's, you know, not
Speaker 1: really very evocative. But maybe as people start looking more
Speaker 1: they'll they'll have better, more colorful names.
Speaker 3: So when you call a moss side note, you usually
Speaker 3: call it by its buttoned up formal Latin name. But
Speaker 3: since doctor Kimmer is like the bryologist, I asked, is
Speaker 3: she going to get to name any like Kimmer's shag
Speaker 3: or heck in cool green fluof? She was like I'm good.
Speaker 1: I'm really more of a moss ecologist, and so I'm
Speaker 1: more interested in their relationships and their adaptive structures. And
Speaker 1: the names are convenient ways to discern one from the other,
Speaker 1: and of course they're important in understanding evolutionary relationships. But
Speaker 1: my fascination with them is is much more in what
Speaker 1: they're doing rather than who they are in a in
Speaker 1: a taxonomic sense.
Speaker 3: That's a great way to put it. And what is
Speaker 3: their role ecologically? That's a huge question, I realized, But what.
Speaker 4: Are they what are they busy doing?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm so glad you asked, because they're They're tiny
Speaker 1: little plants and yet they have a huge role to play.
Speaker 1: Where to start. One of the most important things to
Speaker 1: think about in terms of the roles that mosses play
Speaker 1: is that their whole bodies, their whole way of being,
Speaker 1: is designed at the scale of water drops. They are
Speaker 1: designed to attract and hold water, and so one of
Speaker 1: their major roles is to do exactly that. Mosses are
Speaker 1: like sponges. They hold the water and then they release
Speaker 1: it slowly into the environment, so they create humidity. For example,
Speaker 1: they also create a moist seed bed for other plants
Speaker 1: to seeds to fall on, and then those seeds are
Speaker 1: essentially falling on to a damp sponge that's holding on
Speaker 1: to that moisture. Their moisture holding capacity influences nutrients too.
Speaker 1: Think about that moss on a log that you were invoking, Well,
Speaker 1: if that moss is keeping the log damp by virtue
Speaker 1: of being a sponge, that means that the decay fungi
Speaker 1: are hard at work inside that log, breaking it down
Speaker 1: recycling nutrients much more effectively than if that log didn't
Speaker 1: have a moss blanket on it. So they keep the
Speaker 1: environment moist which allows many many other processes to unfold.
Speaker 1: That's certainly one of their major roles. You can, you'll
Speaker 1: you'll have to turn me off, alick.
Speaker 4: As I know, I love this. My ears are open, Okay.
Speaker 1: One of the other things that that I think people
Speaker 1: are fascinated to know is that mosses have been termed
Speaker 1: the coral reef of the forest because within a moss
Speaker 1: there are hundreds of little organisms living in that. When
Speaker 1: we say well the mosses are a miniature forest, they're
Speaker 1: not only a miniature forest of tiny little trees, but
Speaker 1: they have metaphorically birds living in that canopy. There are
Speaker 1: all kinds of invertebrates that travel up and down the
Speaker 1: trunks of the mosses, if you will, from the top
Speaker 1: of the moss canopy down to the soil. There are herbivores,
Speaker 1: there are grazers, there are predators. There's a whole food
Speaker 1: chain happening inside a little clump of moss. The most
Speaker 1: insane festival the world has ever seen. So they are
Speaker 1: tremendous reservoirs of biodiversity, and that's why they get called
Speaker 1: the coral reefs of the forest.
Speaker 5: And what eats moss? Who grazes on it? Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: a great question. For the most part, mosses are so
Speaker 5: well chemically defended that not much eat them. Within that
Speaker 5: little microcosm, there are some invertebrates which will eat them.
Speaker 5: The invertebrates that have piercing mouth parts will sometimes stick
Speaker 5: that stylet into a moss cell and take out the contents.
Speaker 5: There are some larvae that will actually consume the leaf,
Speaker 5: but for the most part, mosses themselves are not consumed.
Speaker 5: So what do I mean by grazers. Well, within that
Speaker 5: little moss forest there are a little algae and bacteria
Speaker 5: and fungi, that live on the moist moss leaf surface,
Speaker 5: and there are insects that come along, invertebrates excuse me,
Speaker 5: that come along and actually scrape off the little epiphytic
Speaker 5: algae and fungi, and that's what they're eating, not the moss.
Speaker 5: They're living the stuff. They're eating, this stuff that's.
Speaker 1: Growing on the moss.
Speaker 3: Okay, side note, epithetic means stuff that grow on other stuff.
Speaker 3: So any epiphyte is a plant that grows on another
Speaker 3: plant and just needs air and moisture. It's not parasite,
Speaker 3: it's just chillin. It just uses the other plant for support.
Speaker 3: Few epiphytes are mosses, air plants, orchids, and Spanish moss,
Speaker 3: which is not a moss. It's just named after its
Speaker 3: resemblance to a beard lichen. But it's also not a lichen,
Speaker 3: nor is it from Spain. So whenever you feel bad
Speaker 3: about yourself, just remember people had three shots to name
Speaker 3: Spanish moss and they screwed up three times. So you're
Speaker 3: doing fine, buddy. Oh and what kind of chemical defenses
Speaker 3: are the mosses producing.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess I should back up to answer that
Speaker 1: to say that that for the most part, vertebrates do
Speaker 1: not eat mosses. The only ones that do. Birds will
Speaker 1: sometimes eat the capsules the sporophytes, which are protein rich,
Speaker 1: but they almost never eat the leafy part of the plant,
Speaker 1: in large part because that leafy part of the plant
Speaker 1: is so low in nutrients. It's mostly just sell wall
Speaker 1: and water. There's not a lot of sugars or proteins
Speaker 1: in those leaves, so it's kind of a why bother
Speaker 1: You shouldn't eat them because they're nothing but fiber, and
Speaker 1: they have a lot of anti microbials in them, and
Speaker 1: that's where the chemical defenses come in. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, it's a superb adaptation because mosses
Speaker 1: live on wet surfaces, right, They live on bark and
Speaker 1: soil and logs and rocks, and so therefore they would
Speaker 1: be subject you would think, to attack by fun dry
Speaker 1: by bacteria. But they have over a long evolutionary history,
Speaker 1: they have anti microbials, primarily polyphenolic compounds and tannins that
Speaker 1: are in those leaves that make them unpalatable as well
Speaker 1: as not very rewarding for any organisms to eat them.
Speaker 3: So if you're like, yes, yes, a polyphenol, but you
Speaker 3: don't know what one is, don't worry, I gotcha. So,
Speaker 3: a polyphenol is a carbon containing chemical and it's characterized
Speaker 3: by usually many repeating phenyl groups. A phenol is a
Speaker 3: C six H five oh.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: Polyphenols can do things like release or suppressed growth hormones.
Speaker 3: They can protect plants from UV rays, they can deter
Speaker 3: moss munchers. They can even signal to other plants like hey,
Speaker 3: what's up, let's ripen. They can also fight infections, and
Speaker 3: those last types are called phyto alexins in case you're
Speaker 3: ever in need of that word. Now, a tannin is
Speaker 3: a type of polyphenol. And if you've ever had like
Speaker 3: a dry tongue feeling from red wine or a green banana,
Speaker 3: or god forbid you eat an unripe per cinmon, which
Speaker 3: is so cringe inducing you just you might as well
Speaker 3: just try to get a tongue transplant, because it's brutal.
Speaker 3: It's game over. But yeah, then you've had tannins. Now,
Speaker 3: what if you ate stuff that other people don't want
Speaker 3: to eat? Would anyone want to eat you? And have
Speaker 3: those antimgroobigal properties ever been used by other animals in
Speaker 3: their own defense against microscopic critters.
Speaker 1: There's a hypothesis that exactly that, because the only place
Speaker 1: in the world that vertebrates do eat mosses is in
Speaker 1: the Arctic. Terriboo will eat mosses. Lemmings and voles will
Speaker 1: eat mosses, and some of the studies have suggested that
Speaker 1: while they might eat them, they can't digest them. There's
Speaker 1: you know, there's really just not much there to digest.
Speaker 1: But there's a suspicion that they eat them because of
Speaker 1: their anti microbial properties, and that they may do something
Speaker 1: to to regulate digestion in the animals. It's not well understood,
Speaker 1: but animals do exploit the antimicrobial properties of mosses, including
Speaker 1: things like birds. Mosses are really prime materials for nest
Speaker 1: building by songbirds. You'll often see songbirds foraging for mosses
Speaker 1: and they'll be flying around with trailing some brack athesium
Speaker 1: from their beaks and they build it into their nest
Speaker 1: and it's soft, it's insulating, but it's also antimicrobial. And
Speaker 1: the birds that primarily use mosses in their nests are
Speaker 1: the songbirds that whose babies actually poop in the nest,
Speaker 1: and so those the mosses in the nest are thought
Speaker 1: to have a hygienic effect on reducing the microbial load
Speaker 1: in the bird nest.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's so fascinating.
Speaker 4: I mean in lieu of diapers.
Speaker 3: Just yes, yes, you can't body train a tiny bird, it's.
Speaker 1: True, but you know you're right. But in fact, perhaps
Speaker 1: you know mosses have long been used as diapers for
Speaker 1: by humans.
Speaker 3: Really yes, yes, okay, tell me a little bit about
Speaker 3: that if you don't mind.
Speaker 1: Oh, no, of course not. Yeah. Because of mosses absorbents,
Speaker 1: this ability to grab onto and hold water like a sponge,
Speaker 1: they've been very important culturally and ethnobotanically among indigenous peoples worldwide.
Speaker 1: And one of the very common uses for mosses is
Speaker 1: in diapering. And because the mosses are so absorbent of water,
Speaker 1: you put that dry moss around the baby. And in fact,
Speaker 1: in my culture and Potawatomy culture, we talk about wrapping
Speaker 1: the baby and what's called a moss bag, and so
Speaker 1: you stuff that bag with dry moss and then it's absorbent.
Speaker 1: It's like a disposable diaper, but it's also antimicrobial. So
Speaker 1: you have this absorbent, antiseptic soft insulating diapering material amazing.
Speaker 1: So that's just one of the cultural uses of mosses
Speaker 1: that exploits their ability to hold water and to have
Speaker 1: these defensive chemicals in them.
Speaker 3: In gathering moss. Doctor Kimmerer also mentions moss's use as
Speaker 3: a sanitary napkin, which she describes as difficult information to
Speaker 3: track down because ethnographers collecting these stories probably did not
Speaker 3: have vaginas, so they didn't ask. But with all due respect,
Speaker 3: who knows how many stories have been lost of period
Speaker 3: havers joking in their native language about having to ride
Speaker 3: the green carpet that week. Too many to count, and
Speaker 3: I'm sad about it. I asked her what else she
Speaker 3: came across in her research, If there's anything about that
Speaker 3: you'd love to share, I know I love to hear it.
Speaker 1: Sure, there are long lists of the ways that people
Speaker 1: have traditionally used mosses. Diapering is certainly one of them,
Speaker 1: but they're also really commonly used for insulation. If you
Speaker 1: think again about mosses as being absorptive, they're holding water
Speaker 1: well when they're dry. All those little capillary spaces that
Speaker 1: would hold water when they're dry, they're holding air. So
Speaker 1: it's air space. It's contained airspace between leaves and between cells,
Speaker 1: and that's essentially like closed cell foam insulation. And so
Speaker 1: people for a long time used mosses as insulation in
Speaker 1: boots and mittens and hats and bedrolls, and so long
Speaker 1: as it's dry, it's really effective insulation. It was even
Speaker 1: used architecturally in things like wigwams. Traditional wigwams for the
Speaker 1: wintertime would have one dome and then another dome inside it,
Speaker 1: and then that intervening space would be packed with dry moss,
Speaker 1: an excellent insulating material. So all kinds of uses for
Speaker 1: bride flights.
Speaker 3: And I'm also trying to figure out how they photosynthesize
Speaker 3: in such under such a dense canopy. How are they
Speaker 3: doing that?
Speaker 1: That's a great question, because many mosses are driving at
Speaker 1: something like five percent of the ambient available sunshine right.
Speaker 3: Living on only five percent sunlight, Like hit the dimmer switch.
Speaker 4: They don't care.
Speaker 1: They're moss. They got this, and their balance of chlorophyll A, B,
Speaker 1: and C is adjusted to the spectrum of wavelengths of
Speaker 1: light which is available to them in the dense shade,
Speaker 1: So they actually have a different pigment balance and modified
Speaker 1: photosynthetic pathway that allows them to be efficient at really
Speaker 1: low light levels. But it also comes from the fact
Speaker 1: that they don't grow very fast, they don't get very big,
Speaker 1: they don't have really high energetic demands either. So it's
Speaker 1: this matter of adapting to the resources that are available
Speaker 1: to them and doing it superbly. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: there are mosses that live in full sun in the desert,
Speaker 1: and so they're able to utilize different wavelengths of light,
Speaker 1: and they're really well adapted to those habitats.
Speaker 3: So how are these soggy green babies also thriving in
Speaker 3: the desert? Doctor Kimerer dishes.
Speaker 1: But you know, this gets us to one of the
Speaker 1: other totally amazing thing about losses is that think about
Speaker 1: that desert moss for a second. You know, it has
Speaker 1: no axylum and fluam, It has no roots, it has
Speaker 1: no way to store water. So what happens to it
Speaker 1: is that it dries up. It dries up and becomes
Speaker 1: this just little black crust on a rock or in
Speaker 1: a soil crevice, And if you just walked by it,
Speaker 1: you'd think it was dead. But it's not dead. It's
Speaker 1: just waiting. And mosses are what are known as poikilo hydric,
Speaker 1: which is well, you know, there's poikolo thermic, right for
Speaker 1: cold blooded animals, animals whose temperature is the same temperature
Speaker 1: as the environment. For mosses, their poikolo hydric. Their water
Speaker 1: content reflects the water content in the environment. So when
Speaker 1: it dries out, the moss dries out. But unlike the
Speaker 1: plant on your windowsill that gets crisp and it's done for, right,
Speaker 1: the mosses are not done for. They go into this
Speaker 1: state of I guess we'd just call it sort of
Speaker 1: a suspended animation, and they're dry and crisp and just
Speaker 1: sitting there. They can't photosynthesize unless they're wet, but they're
Speaker 1: just waiting, and then it rains and within twenty five
Speaker 1: minutes they're back to full photosynthesis. Oh wow, it's amazing.
Speaker 4: You mentioned it as sort of a crust on our rock.
Speaker 3: And I know a lot of people are so curious.
Speaker 3: How can you tell a lichen from a moss?
Speaker 1: Hey, great question, because lichens and mosses often live together
Speaker 1: right at the same scale, and lichens are not differentiated
Speaker 1: like a plant into stemina leaves. Lichens are going to
Speaker 1: be a Thallus right, sometimes powdery, sometimes kind of leathery,
Speaker 1: but they're not going to have a stem with leaves
Speaker 1: on it. Where's mosses do? And lichens, which by the way,
Speaker 1: are also Poikola hydric, have this amazing water stress tolerance.
Speaker 1: They tend towards the spectrum of gray and blue and
Speaker 1: sometimes have olive green as well as the gorgeous orange
Speaker 1: and yellow ones, colors that you don't see in mosses,
Speaker 1: but a real grassy greens are our mosses, well, except
Speaker 1: for the ones who live in the desert, and they
Speaker 1: are black and crusty, and that the blackness of the
Speaker 1: of the mosses are caused by these flavonoid pigments and
Speaker 1: it's essentially sunscreen. The mosses have laid down this pigment
Speaker 1: layer to prevent them from having the photosynthesis and the
Speaker 1: chlorophyll being photodegraded in the intense So I'm like.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, that's so smart.
Speaker 3: What about how airflow influences their growth?
Speaker 1: What a good question.
Speaker 4: Thank you, oh man.
Speaker 3: I have been so nervous to meet her because she's
Speaker 3: so cool and I like her book so much, and
Speaker 3: every time she says I have a good question. I
Speaker 3: just want you to know that I'm just like floating
Speaker 3: on air currents inside, like oh uh, like I'm blushing
Speaker 3: talking about her right now.
Speaker 1: Okay. Anyway, airflow, of course is going to make things
Speaker 1: dry out right, It's going to sweep that water away.
Speaker 1: It's going to increase evaporation. And because mosses can only
Speaker 1: photosynthesize when they're both wet and illuminated, airflow can be
Speaker 1: a great detriment to the growth of mosses. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons they are so small. Because it
Speaker 1: turns out that there are places in the world, in
Speaker 1: the whole landscape right where airflow is minimal. Those places
Speaker 1: of minimal airflow or what are known as the boundary layer.
Speaker 1: And a boundary layer is this area of extremely still
Speaker 1: air right at the surface of any surface, a log,
Speaker 1: a rock, a tree, your house, there's this little area
Speaker 1: of still air. And because in that space the wind
Speaker 1: doesn't blow, there's just so much friction with the surface.
Speaker 1: This region of still air is where mosses live. It's
Speaker 1: they live within the boundary layer, and that way they
Speaker 1: can stay moist. They don't have so much evaporation because
Speaker 1: of wind flow and if the mosses got bigger than
Speaker 1: the boundary layer which is created by their surface, they
Speaker 1: would dry out. And you can almost measure the depth
Speaker 1: of the boundary layer by the height of the mosses.
Speaker 4: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Ah, So that's ecologically, that's part of the puzzle and
Speaker 3: how it all fits together.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely, and that's why in the desert on a rock,
Speaker 1: the mosses are teatsy. You know, they might only be
Speaker 1: a couple of millimeters tall because they have to stay
Speaker 1: within the boundary layer of that rock surface, Whereas if
Speaker 1: they're living under the shady, moist canopy of a hemlock tree,
Speaker 1: they can be five inches tall because there's a much
Speaker 1: bigger boundary layer there in the because of the trees
Speaker 1: overhead and the logs that they might be living on,
Speaker 1: so they can live within that little area. That little
Speaker 1: boundary layer is not only a place where the wind
Speaker 1: doesn't blow, where theoretically it's absolutely still air, but if
Speaker 1: you think about every surface of having this little boundary
Speaker 1: layer over it, it also means that within that area
Speaker 1: it's warmer because the sun will shine on the log,
Speaker 1: let's say, and then it's re radiated as heat, and
Speaker 1: that heat doesn't blow away, there's not as much convection,
Speaker 1: and so it's caught in this little boundary layer. The
Speaker 1: moisture that's coming off from that log gets caught in
Speaker 1: the boundary layer. So mosses essentially are inhabiting a little greenhouse,
Speaker 1: a little greenhouse that lives that occurs naturally over every surface,
Speaker 1: a place which is warmer, moister, and as it happens,
Speaker 1: richer in carbon dioxide than any place else. And that's
Speaker 1: where the mosses live. They're exploiting these little microhabitats that
Speaker 1: rather than trying to dominate and control the habitat, they're
Speaker 1: taking advantage of the laws of physics and exploiting these
Speaker 1: naturally occurring little greenhouses.
Speaker 3: You know, that brings me to a question. We like
Speaker 3: to debunk flimp lamb. We like tom bust myths with
Speaker 3: ologismhen we can, But is there truth that moss tends
Speaker 3: to grow on the north side of trunks or is
Speaker 3: that total bunk?
Speaker 1: It's so great that the one thing people think they
Speaker 1: know about mosses isn't true. No, this idea that moses
Speaker 1: moss only grows on the north side of the tree. No,
Speaker 1: if you use that for direction finding, you'd be going
Speaker 1: in circles. It is true. It is true that mosses
Speaker 1: will grow more prolifically in the cooler, shadier place. And
Speaker 1: are the north sides of trees cooler and shadier than
Speaker 1: the south side. Sure, unless there's a forest gap overhead,
Speaker 1: unless that tree is leaning in a certain angle, unless
Speaker 1: there's a ravine over there, so many other factors that
Speaker 1: influence it. I think the only place that it would
Speaker 1: really make sense as a wavefinder is in places that
Speaker 1: are totally flat with a uniform kind of forest vegetation.
Speaker 1: And so it might be, and there's greater evidence for
Speaker 1: this in the boreal forest. There is more moss growth
Speaker 1: on the north side of the tree, but only in
Speaker 1: those circumstances of flat terrain and homogeneous vegetation. So no,
Speaker 1: bring a compass instead.
Speaker 3: Your moss is not your GPS. And I wanted to
Speaker 3: ask before we get into listener questions, a little bit
Speaker 3: about about your writing, because it's kind of surreal to
Speaker 3: talk to you because I've listened to your audiobooks because
Speaker 3: you you narrate them, you read them, and you're so
Speaker 3: you have such a wonderful voice and cadence, but you
Speaker 3: know when you when you first decided to write Gathering Moss,
Speaker 3: you know what really moved you to take that sabbatical
Speaker 3: and put all of this work into words, You know.
Speaker 1: Ellie, it really came from a certain kind of frustration
Speaker 1: of only writing for peer reviewed, technical, scientific audience, in
Speaker 1: that I've spent so many wonderful years of my life
Speaker 1: learning from mosses, of just being with them, and when
Speaker 1: I test a hypothesis and report on it in an
Speaker 1: article for the Bryologist, everything that I've learned had to
Speaker 1: be boiled down into data tables and p values, and
Speaker 1: there was no room in that kind of writing for
Speaker 1: wonder or for talking about the amazing little things that
Speaker 1: you see and the things that the mosses have to
Speaker 1: teach you. And there came to be a place where, ironically,
Speaker 1: as a science I felt like I couldn't really tell
Speaker 1: the truth by using only scientific writing. And so, having
Speaker 1: been given this privilege I've spent in my career among mosses,
Speaker 1: I felt like I really needed to do justice to
Speaker 1: the masses and tell a little bit more about how
Speaker 1: they live their lives and their incredible ways of being
Speaker 1: and lessons that they have for us. So I set
Speaker 1: myself this goal to see if I could write in
Speaker 1: such a way that people could fall in love with mosses.
Speaker 1: And that was really my intent, tell the truth about
Speaker 1: mosses in such a way that these overlooked, ancient, wonderful
Speaker 1: little beings would get a chance to tell their story.
Speaker 3: And you even personal experience and observation and setting and
Speaker 3: an atmosphere so well as well as you know, your
Speaker 3: your history and your indigenous culture, which Breeding sweet Grass
Speaker 3: also just hit the New York Times bestseller list too,
Speaker 3: write a few months ago. Congratulations on that. Yeah, thanks,
Speaker 3: you know, can you tell me a little bit about
Speaker 3: what that's meant to you to get to express that
Speaker 3: to more public audience than than you know, just your
Speaker 3: students or other biologists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it has been so gratifying and admittedly very surprising, uh,
Speaker 1: to see their response to to both of these books,
Speaker 1: in particular Breeding sweet Grass. For me, it has been
Speaker 1: so hopeful because I really have this sense, with both
Speaker 1: Gathering Moss and Breeding sweet Grass that those books are
Speaker 1: meant to awaken something in reader's this sense of wonder
Speaker 1: for sure, but also the sense of wisdom of the
Speaker 1: living world, the wisdom that plants have for us, and
Speaker 1: I'm so gratified to know that people are open to
Speaker 1: that idea, that they're open to think about learning not
Speaker 1: just about plants, but learning from plants, and willing to
Speaker 1: walk that path with me as a writer of trying
Speaker 1: on these different perspectives of let's look at the world
Speaker 1: through the lens of indigenous ways of being, let's look
Speaker 1: at the world through the lens of a tree or
Speaker 1: a lichen, and what might we learn. And it's just
Speaker 1: been so rewarding to have from so many different places
Speaker 1: and cultures and experiences embrace that. And it makes me
Speaker 1: so happy to think that the plants stories get to
Speaker 1: be shared so widely, and that it might ignite even
Speaker 1: more stories of people and their relationship two plants.
Speaker 3: I've got sixteen plants, and I have so many questions
Speaker 3: from listeners. Obviously we're not going to get to all
Speaker 3: three hundred and sixteen of them.
Speaker 1: I hope there's some overlap.
Speaker 3: There's some overlap, but people are excited and I'll just
Speaker 3: dive in if that's okay, you bet, okay, So we
Speaker 3: won't get to those questions in just a moment. But first,
Speaker 3: a word from sponsors who make it possible for us
Speaker 3: to donate to a cause close to the heart of theologist,
Speaker 3: and this week a donation is going straight to Sunni's
Speaker 3: College of Environmental Science and Forestries Center for Native Peoples
Speaker 3: and the Environment, which was founded by hi none other
Speaker 3: than doctor Robin Kimmer. So. They are located within the
Speaker 3: original territory of the Hottanessauni or Iroquois Confederacy, with a
Speaker 3: mission to create programs that draw on the wisdom of
Speaker 3: both indigenous and scientific knowledge in support of shared goals
Speaker 3: of environmental sustainability. And the center includes a significant outreach
Speaker 3: element that's focused on increasing educational opportunities for Native American
Speaker 3: students in environmental sciences. There are also research collaborations partnerships
Speaker 3: with Native American communities to address local environmental problems. There
Speaker 3: are scholarships and fellowships also available. We're also sending a
Speaker 3: do nation per doctor Kimerer, to the American Indian Science
Speaker 3: and Engineering Society, whose goal is to substantially increase the
Speaker 3: representation of American Indian, Alaska, Native, Native, Hawaiian, Pacific Islander,
Speaker 3: First Nation, and other Indigenous peoples of North America in
Speaker 3: the fields of science, technology, engineering, math, and other related disciplines.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: They were founded in nineteen seventy seven and they have
Speaker 3: awarded nearly twelve million in counting in academic scholarships. They
Speaker 3: also offer internships, professional development conferences, and more so. First
Speaker 3: donation was to the ESF Center for Native Peoples and
Speaker 3: the Environment and another donation to the American Indian Science
Speaker 3: and Engineering Society. Thank you for the heads up on those,
Speaker 3: doctor kimber So. A donation went to them thanks to
Speaker 3: some sponsors who you may hear about.
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Speaker 3: Prices very and express, Okay and now on to questions
Speaker 3: submitted by beloved patrons.
Speaker 4: See there's one first time question.
Speaker 3: Asker uh Sigwani Dana says, I am Panopscat, a tribe
Speaker 3: from Maine, and I also teach high school science, and
Speaker 3: I find that I feel like I live in two
Speaker 3: worlds and they often clash. How do you mentally bridge
Speaker 3: indigenous culture and intuition with Western science?
Speaker 4: And I hope I read that.
Speaker 3: Earlier, and I tried to make sure I pronounced it right,
Speaker 3: but I'm not sure if I did, and I will
Speaker 3: re record it if I didn't.
Speaker 1: No, it's perfect. It was perfect. Yeah, And I'm really
Speaker 1: grateful for that question. And I think one of the
Speaker 1: ways that that I try to bridge that that I
Speaker 1: work both in my own writing and with my own teaching,
Speaker 1: is to think about the fact that within indigenous knowledge systems,
Speaker 1: we recognize that that human people have at least four
Speaker 1: different ways of understanding the world. Certainly with the intellect
Speaker 1: absolutely mental way of processing and generating information. We also
Speaker 1: have physical knowledge from observation, from measurement, right from sensing
Speaker 1: the world. But if we continue around that, think of
Speaker 1: it as this medicine real model, we have the knowledge
Speaker 1: of the mind the knowledge of the body in two
Speaker 1: of those quadrants. But then we have an emotional intelligence
Speaker 1: and we have spiritual knowledge spiritual ways of knowing, and
Speaker 1: all of those ways of knowing are valid and important.
Speaker 1: They're like different tools that you deploy for different purposes,
Speaker 1: for different questions that you might have. So that's a
Speaker 1: very holistic way of thinking about knowledge as embracing all
Speaker 1: of those ways. But in Western science we've truncated that.
Speaker 1: In Western science we privilege the knowledge of the intellect
Speaker 1: and that which we can measure and very explicitly set
Speaker 1: aside emotional and spiritual knowledge and say that doesn't count,
Speaker 1: that doesn't matter, that's that's not the real valid knowledge.
Speaker 1: And so the scientific way of knowing is a subset
Speaker 1: of indigenous knowledge. And that's the way I try to
Speaker 1: present it is that one is a subset of the other.
Speaker 1: Each of them has these powerful ways of knowing, engaging
Speaker 1: different tools that we as people have, And the real
Speaker 1: key to navigating that boundary of two worlds which I
Speaker 1: experience and understand is to think about them as of
Speaker 1: different gifts, of different tools. And when you have a
Speaker 1: true false question, the scientific ways of knowing and hypothesis testing.
Speaker 1: That's a darn good tool for a true false question
Speaker 1: questions bigger than that, then you need not only what
Speaker 1: is true, but what is right and what is meaningful
Speaker 1: and what are the implications of it? And then the
Speaker 1: wholeism of indigenous knowledge can bring you to wisdom rather
Speaker 1: than just information.
Speaker 4: That's great.
Speaker 3: So to learn more about this, you can look up
Speaker 3: medicine wheels, which can also represent the four directions north, south, east,
Speaker 3: and west, or the seasons spring, summer, winterfall, the elements
Speaker 3: of earth, wind, water, and fire, or those four aspects
Speaker 3: of mind, body, emotions and spirit. Now, if you are
Speaker 3: a non indigenous person and you would like to make
Speaker 3: sure that your naturalist teachings touch on indigenous knowledge in
Speaker 3: the right way, Patrons Ira Gray, Olivia Di Borcier, and
Speaker 3: Sophie Carine Mitty Thompson, Liz Ropke, and first time question
Speaker 3: askers Lanna mac bridgid Gwen Kelly and Siata Darcy all
Speaker 3: submitted awesome questions wanting to know if you think there
Speaker 3: are any good tools for for non Indigenous folks to
Speaker 3: sort of incorporate that into their teaching or their botany courses,
Speaker 3: or you know, if they're if that's something that Alison
Speaker 3: bra says, what are some ways that non indigenous naturalists
Speaker 3: and educators can engage with or teach about traditional knowledge
Speaker 3: about native plants in their area without appropriating Native cultures.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, excellent question. And I think that this I'll
Speaker 1: return to them to the prior question, because these ways
Speaker 1: of knowing that we might call indigenous ways of knowing
Speaker 1: all you know, mind, body, emotion, spirit, those are human
Speaker 1: ways of knowing, you know, and so bringing one's full
Speaker 1: humanity to being a scientist and teaching science is I
Speaker 1: think really important. But more specifically to the question of
Speaker 1: how to teach about Indigenous ways of knowing without appropriating
Speaker 1: one of the most important things to do is what
Speaker 1: we do in Western science as well, and that cite
Speaker 1: your sources right acknowledge where that knowledge came from, and
Speaker 1: not to portray it as one's own, but to give
Speaker 1: full credit to the to the people who created that knowledge,
Speaker 1: who learned these things passed them on, and to me,
Speaker 1: that is a is the first step is to know
Speaker 1: where that knowledge came from and and to to honor
Speaker 1: it and and essentially cite it the way that we
Speaker 1: that we do in Western science. I think it's also
Speaker 1: really important to when we're avoiding cultural appropriation, to have
Speaker 1: an authentic experience of engagement with place. You don't need
Speaker 1: to say, well, native people tell us to be grateful
Speaker 1: for the gifts of plants around us. Yes, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1: But the way that you man assessed that gratitude should
Speaker 1: be in your own cultural framework. You don't have to
Speaker 1: take another way of showing gratitude for the gifts of
Speaker 1: the earth. You can show it's your own way. And
Speaker 1: so coming up with authentic expressions of your own relationship
Speaker 1: with the living world is a way to make your
Speaker 1: experiences much more powerful because they're your own and it
Speaker 1: avoids cultural appropriation as well.
Speaker 4: That's a beautiful way to look at it.
Speaker 3: By the bye, I listened to some of gathering moss
Speaker 3: sitting on a rock under an oak tree in unseated
Speaker 3: Tongue of the territory in Southern California. Now ten out
Speaker 3: of ten highly recommend enjoying her dulcet voice on a blanket,
Speaker 3: watching squirrels, maybe on your city balcony, looking at a
Speaker 3: bee waggle its butt, or on a walk through the woods.
Speaker 3: Even more, finishing your taxes really actually no bad time
Speaker 3: or place, come to think of it. Anyway, I have
Speaker 3: a this is a funny question, Rebecca Pancoast says, first
Speaker 3: time question asker. When I was little, I always imagined
Speaker 3: a patch of moss would be the most magical and
Speaker 3: comfortable place to take a nap. What species of moss
Speaker 3: do you think would make the best napping spot? And
Speaker 3: Emily Roth asked, also, if you've ever slept on a
Speaker 3: bed of moss and if it's comfortable?
Speaker 1: The answer is yes, I sure have, and you know
Speaker 1: I'm not the only one, of course, moss as betting
Speaker 1: is a common traditional practice, and even Linnaeus, you know,
Speaker 1: the so called father of western botany. Anyway, as if
Speaker 1: before Linaeus people didn't have botany, it's a different story.
Speaker 1: But Linnaeus is said to have traveled with a bedroll
Speaker 1: made out of politricum juniporrhinum, a wonderful mossy bedroll. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I've taken a nap on all kinds of mosses. But
Speaker 1: one of the things to be really sure about is
Speaker 1: to think again about that notion that they're sponges. They're
Speaker 1: full of water. So I have had many a wet bottom, thinking, Oh,
Speaker 1: this will be a really nice place to sit, and like, no,
Speaker 1: not so much. It'sl like soggy bossom there.
Speaker 3: And you know to in terms of the things that
Speaker 3: are living in there too. Lilian Ledford and Julianne Gibson
Speaker 3: had similar questions. Lillian said, this is an adjacent question
Speaker 3: from their friend Emily Ford.
Speaker 4: Do you squeal and coop.
Speaker 3: With delight when you find tartar grades in moss specimens?
Speaker 3: And Julianne wants to know how many tarties can moss hold?
Speaker 1: Do you ever see the little moss piglets? Oh They're
Speaker 1: just amazing, aren't they. Yes, I do squeal with delight
Speaker 1: such remark arkable beings. And in terms of how many
Speaker 1: are in a little clump of moss, you know that
Speaker 1: depends on the moss. Tartar grades especially like Sphagnum moss
Speaker 1: peat mosses because they're consistently moist. They also like the
Speaker 1: log mosses, those big robust wefts that grow on logs,
Speaker 1: But the shorter turf mosses will hardly have any tartar
Speaker 1: grades in them. So the answer is the answer to
Speaker 1: most ecological questions.
Speaker 3: It depends, It depends, and if you're like a tartar grade.
Speaker 4: What's that?
Speaker 3: Oh well, welcome to the best thing you're ever going
Speaker 3: to learn.
Speaker 1: Ever.
Speaker 3: So, they are water dwelling, eight legged, segmented micro annibals.
Speaker 3: They're also called water bears or moss piglets. And they
Speaker 3: look like kind of little loaves of bread, but with
Speaker 3: stumpy little legs, and then they have a face that
Speaker 3: looks kind of like a robot's butthole.
Speaker 1: I love them.
Speaker 3: They can live in space, they can live completely desiccated
Speaker 3: for long periods of time. Maybe they're aliens. They're not,
Speaker 3: but what if they were. Anyway, I've never seen one irl,
Speaker 3: but now I know to go for the bigger, more robust,
Speaker 3: longer soggy mosses. Don't mess with the shorter turf mosses.
Speaker 3: There's no water bears there. That's not where the tardy
Speaker 3: party is at. And don't be tardy to the Tardi
Speaker 3: party or your asses grass hey speaking of Andrea Kendall, Burnell,
Speaker 3: Ell McCall, Lee, Sarah Lucesi, Evan Jude, Amanda Mueller, whose
Speaker 3: name I say wrong every time I think it's Mueller.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, Courtney Ryan J. Gordon, John Sanston Allen Skelton,
Speaker 3: colleeni B, Jessica Mezzla, Amelia Hines, Maggie Bender, Emily, Elaine Labord,
Speaker 3: Samantha Heineke, John Sanson, Nicole Wackery, Corleno, and not a
Speaker 3: cephalopod all asked this next one. It's a good question.
Speaker 3: That's why so many people asked it. I've a bunch
Speaker 3: of people had questions about moss lawns, replacing your lawn
Speaker 3: with something more sustainable and less water hungry. How do
Speaker 3: you feel about that? Or there is also it depends.
Speaker 1: My take on moss lawns is that if the mosses
Speaker 1: come to your lawn, encourage them, help them become a
Speaker 1: moss lawn. But in most cases it is very difficult
Speaker 1: and not sustainable to try to replace a grass lawn
Speaker 1: with a moss lawn because mosses will almost always lose
Speaker 1: to lose out in a competition to rooted plants. And
Speaker 1: there is this movement, oh, well, let's go, let's go
Speaker 1: buy mosses and install them in our lawns so that
Speaker 1: we can have a lawn that we don't have to
Speaker 1: mow or water. If those mosses were capable of growing
Speaker 1: in that setting, they would probably already be there. I
Speaker 1: am really not a fan of the of the notion
Speaker 1: of transplanting mosses from the places where they are perfectly
Speaker 1: happy and doing their work and bringing them to places
Speaker 1: where they are not going to thrive. You can create
Speaker 1: the conditions for them. What I always say to people
Speaker 1: when they ask me about this, if you build it,
Speaker 1: they will come. If you make a place which is
Speaker 1: moist and shady and not conducive to grass or groundcover,
Speaker 1: mosses will come there and they'll colonize it very happily.
Speaker 1: But for the most part transplanting there's some exceptions to this.
Speaker 1: Of course, for the most part, transplanting mosses or using
Speaker 1: this moss milkshake method for getting moss lawns started, is
Speaker 1: I think unfair to mosses.
Speaker 4: That's good to know.
Speaker 3: If you're like, did she just say moss milkshake?
Speaker 1: Did I hear that? Right?
Speaker 4: She did?
Speaker 1: You did?
Speaker 3: So? A moss milkshake is something that you can purchase
Speaker 3: in what looks like a milk carton, or you can
Speaker 3: just frappe up one yourself. You can just grind local
Speaker 3: moss and water with a little corn starch, sometimes yogurt
Speaker 3: people do all kinds of things. You make a bubbly
Speaker 3: slurry and then you just painted on objects and cross
Speaker 3: your fingers. But remember right place, right moss is the key.
Speaker 4: No your moss. Also, some folks use.
Speaker 3: This method to create a live murals And if you
Speaker 3: don't believe me, you can google moss graffiti. So is
Speaker 3: your home even cute if it doesn't have a moss mural? Also,
Speaker 3: speaking of Pinterest design aspirations, a lot of people, so
Speaker 3: many including Amy car Adam Weaver, Medicine, John's, Molly Johnson,
Speaker 3: Lacy Ireton, Attie Capella, Britney Panos, Megan Lucian, Al McCall,
Speaker 3: KATHREYE Warren, Kimberly McCall and first time question asker Sekura
Speaker 3: wanted to know about this next one.
Speaker 4: What about bath mats? Have you seen this?
Speaker 1: I have no, no, and.
Speaker 3: No okay, And to summarize no.
Speaker 4: Conclusion, no no.
Speaker 1: I put that in the realm of of a most torture.
Speaker 1: Will Will they absorb water? Sure they will? Will they
Speaker 1: like chemicals and soap scum and fluorescent light? No they
Speaker 1: will not, and they will they will just die. Leave
Speaker 1: them in the forest and have a cotton bath mat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that kind of brings me to my my
Speaker 3: last question from listeners. Well, two people wrote in Addie
Speaker 3: Cappello and Carrie Simo. I'm not sure if those names
Speaker 3: are familiar to you, but they both students of yours.
Speaker 1: It's kinda says are names.
Speaker 3: And Carrie is a former student, says I took briology
Speaker 3: and ethnobotany with doctor kimer at esf two thousand and
Speaker 3: eight to twenty ten. I love you, doctor Kimerer, You've
Speaker 3: been such an inspiration. Just mossum and they are a
Speaker 3: restoration practitioner in Boulder County now. And one of the
Speaker 3: questions that Carrie had was is unsustainable harvest still an
Speaker 3: issue in the Pacific Northwest? Can we kind of discuss
Speaker 3: taking moss from one area and using it for something else?
Speaker 3: What should we know about that?
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for that question, because one of
Speaker 1: the unintended consequences, of course, of people coming to love
Speaker 1: mosses is that they want to commodify them, they want
Speaker 1: to have them around, and much of the unsustainable harvest
Speaker 1: of the epiphytic moss communities of the temperate rainforest and
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest is for horticultural work. You know, people
Speaker 1: are harvesting these old, beautiful moth carpets out of the
Speaker 1: woods and using them to line flower baskets or flower pots,
Speaker 1: or in some cases sewing them onto fabric to make
Speaker 1: these moss carpets for displays and so forth, and the
Speaker 1: mosses grow back really quite slowly.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 1: I think an unsustainable practice at the current level, and
Speaker 1: especially when you think of everything that's lost by taking them,
Speaker 1: all those invertebrates, the coral reef of the forest, you know,
Speaker 1: made to line a flower pot. That doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: me to be an honorable way to relate to forest briefites.
Speaker 1: And there is a permit system in place in the
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest to regulate moss harvest. I am not current
Speaker 1: they at the moment state of affairs, but the last
Speaker 1: time I really looked into this it was largely unenforced.
Speaker 1: There's there's there's a permit system, but nobody there enforcing it.
Speaker 1: So again it's something that I would say is an
Speaker 1: unsustainable practice.
Speaker 3: Oh and one more questions. People are going to be
Speaker 3: so mad if I didn't ask how well Casey Sisterson
Speaker 3: wants to know, does the proverb a rolling stone gathers
Speaker 3: no moss bother you in terms of as though gathering
Speaker 3: moss was a bad thing.
Speaker 1: I guess I've never understood that proverb. Somebody told me
Speaker 1: that what it really means is that if you don't
Speaker 1: stay put, you will never get rich, you'll never accumulate wealth,
Speaker 1: i e. Gather moss. I don't know if that's really
Speaker 1: what it means or what's original intent was, but one
Speaker 1: of the beauties of mosses is their ability to remind
Speaker 1: us about being still, about staying in place. Mosses have
Speaker 1: a very high fidelity and loyalty to their home places,
Speaker 1: which is why they don't transplant. Well, they want to
Speaker 1: live here, not somewhere else. They're very specific and invested
Speaker 1: in their places, and I think that's one of the
Speaker 1: wonderful teachings that they have for us. So, yeah, a
Speaker 1: rolling stone gathers no moss. Okay.
Speaker 3: Ps side note, I always thought that meant that you
Speaker 3: have to keep on your hustle or else you'll just
Speaker 3: become green and hairy. And yes, I looked it up,
Speaker 3: and it was originally supposed to mean that a tree
Speaker 3: that's moved a bunch bears no fruit. Also side note,
Speaker 3: the Rolling Stones just got that name when a journalist
Speaker 3: on the was like, hey, what do you call it?
Speaker 3: And Brian Jones saw a Muddy Waters album on the
Speaker 3: floor and read off one of the tracks being like, oh,
Speaker 3: rolling Stones, like Jan Brady George Glass style. Also, if
Speaker 3: you think that the a rolling stone gathers no moss
Speaker 3: proverb is confusing, consider also that in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 3: psychiatrists would read this idiom off to you and if
Speaker 3: you couldn't explain what it meant metaphorically, they would diagnose
Speaker 3: you with schizophrenia. According to the nineteen fifty six publication
Speaker 3: Clinical Manual for Proverbs Test by one Montana based psychological
Speaker 3: test specialist, what this proverb doesn't even know what this
Speaker 3: proverb means? Anyway, I don't think they do that anymore
Speaker 3: because it sucks now in that Vein the last two
Speaker 3: questions I always ask a aneologist is what is the
Speaker 3: hardest part about your job or about being a biologist,
Speaker 3: or what's frustrating or even if it's petty, or even
Speaker 3: if it's you know, a deep or silly, what's one
Speaker 3: thing that is kind of sticks in your crash?
Speaker 1: I have never been asked that question, and I so
Speaker 1: love being a bryologist that I have a hard time
Speaker 1: thinking of that. I honestly, I can't think of anything.
Speaker 4: In a way.
Speaker 1: I suppose the thing that frustrates me is that people
Speaker 1: overlook mosses. There are times in the plant ecology literature,
Speaker 1: when scientific literature, when they're describing a forested community, they'll
Speaker 1: have a category called moss, Like, really, that's all you got.
Speaker 1: That's a category kind of like tree, because mosses have
Speaker 1: so much ability in their specificity to tell us something
Speaker 1: about that place. Just to lump all these you know,
Speaker 1: seventeen thou species of beings into a category called moss
Speaker 1: is frustrating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's so valid. And then this is gonna be hard.
Speaker 3: But what is your favorite thing about moss? What is
Speaker 3: the thing that just gives you the butterflies the most ors,
Speaker 3: just makes your heart swell.
Speaker 1: Straight up? Their beauty. I've been looking at mosses for
Speaker 1: oh man, half a century, and it still gives me
Speaker 1: a thrill when I put my lens on them and think,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, this just perfection in miniature. Their beautiful
Speaker 1: intimacy with water, their their quiet kind of elegance, I
Speaker 1: admire them.
Speaker 3: That's beautiful, that's awesome. I think there'll probably be a
Speaker 3: lot of people inspired to invest in a loop and
Speaker 3: I hope.
Speaker 1: So do you have one, Ellie?
Speaker 4: Not yet, No, but I was like I was.
Speaker 3: Thinking about it and just looking at the rocks in
Speaker 3: the yard and thinking, oh gosh, I want to see
Speaker 3: so much.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I think that's next on my list. I yeah,
Speaker 4: Oh do it, absolutely, I can't. It's just this idea
Speaker 4: that there's this magical world that's.
Speaker 3: Right underneath you, that you know that if you just
Speaker 3: kind of open your.
Speaker 4: Eyes and get still enough to look.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: Thank you so so much for talking to me.
Speaker 3: And doing this, and you've just been You've been on
Speaker 3: my list as someone I've wanted to talk to you
Speaker 3: for so long, and it it just Yeah, it feels
Speaker 3: surreal hearing your voice talk to me.
Speaker 4: The person who reads you to sleep at night.
Speaker 1: I know, it's weird. Yeah, you've been with.
Speaker 4: Me on hikes and all kinds of things. You've done
Speaker 4: this with me. To have an interaction interaction is really surreal.
Speaker 4: But thank you so so much for doing this.
Speaker 3: So ask awesome Bryologists, great questions or any smart people,
Speaker 3: stupid ones, and just know that there's a universe around
Speaker 3: you that is unfathomably large and it keeps expanding. And
Speaker 3: then there's also worlds in miniature underfoot just living out
Speaker 3: love and drama. Now, Doctor Robin Kimer's books once again
Speaker 3: are Gathering Moss, a natural and cultural history of mosses,
Speaker 3: and Braiding Sweet Grass, Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the
Speaker 3: Teachings of Plants.
Speaker 1: Both are wonderful.
Speaker 3: So if you just fell in love with her words
Speaker 3: and her cadence and her outlook, get them an audiobook
Speaker 3: form if you like, and you can just have her
Speaker 3: in your ears as you go about your days. You
Speaker 3: can also become her fan at Facebook dot com slash
Speaker 3: Braiding Sweet Grass.
Speaker 1: There will be.
Speaker 3: Links to those in the show notes, as well as
Speaker 3: a link to donate to the Center for Native Peoples
Speaker 3: in the Environment, should you choose. You can follow Ologies
Speaker 3: at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm on both as
Speaker 3: Ali word with one. Now come be friends. You can
Speaker 3: join the Ologies podcast Facebook group. It's full of foreteen thousand,
Speaker 3: very loving, accepting humans and that's admined by the wonderful
Speaker 3: Ernie Michelle Campbell Talbert My friend since we were four.
Speaker 3: You can also wear Ologies merch by going to ologiesmirch
Speaker 3: dot com. Thank you to Shannon Feltus and Bonnie Dutch.
Speaker 3: They host a very charming comedy podcast called You Are
Speaker 3: That and they help with merch which is agonizingly delayed
Speaker 3: at the printer's warehouse due to the pandemic. So thank
Speaker 3: you for your patience. Thank you Emily White for cranking
Speaker 3: out transcripts with all the folks in the Ologies transcriber group,
Speaker 3: I love you all. Caleb Patten bleeps the episode so
Speaker 3: they're safe for kiddos. Those and transcripts are up for
Speaker 3: free at alleywar dot com slash Ologiestash Extras. There's a
Speaker 3: link to that in the show notes. Thank you to
Speaker 3: everyone on Patreon for helping me pay these amazing people
Speaker 3: to help out. Also, Noel Dilworth helps with all the scheduling.
Speaker 3: She's an angel on Earth. Kelly Dwyer updates the website
Speaker 3: at alleywar dot com. And Jared Sleeper does the first
Speaker 3: pass edits and cuts out all my ms another nonsense,
Speaker 3: and the wonderful Stephen Ray Morris stitches all the pieces together.
Speaker 4: To me make the moss quilt. You hear it today.
Speaker 3: Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote and performed the
Speaker 3: theme music, which I think we should get on the
Speaker 3: iTunes store.
Speaker 4: What do you say?
Speaker 1: Should we do it?
Speaker 3: Okay, Now, if you stick around at the end of
Speaker 3: the episode, you know, I tell you a secret. And
Speaker 3: this week's secret is that sometimes when I eat a carrot,
Speaker 3: I eat like all the way up to the butt
Speaker 3: of it. You know, sometimes I'll even munch the butt
Speaker 3: a little bit. And I was telling my friend Mike
Speaker 3: about this once and he was like, you can do that.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I think, And anyway, he ate the whole
Speaker 3: carrot butt and then he got terrible food poisoning. And
Speaker 3: now whenever I eat a carrot up to the butt,
Speaker 3: I think, oh man, poor Micah, I probably shouldn't eat
Speaker 3: the top of the carrot. Sorry, Micah. Anyway, I guess
Speaker 3: at some point you could just got to stop eating
Speaker 3: the carrot and get another carrot, and please nobody do
Speaker 3: this and get food poisoning.
Speaker 4: Okay, thank you for listening to this public service announcement.
Speaker 4: All right, Byebride.
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