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Speaker 3: Oh hey, it's your neighbor who grows a mustache every
Speaker 3: November and truthfully it's more reliable a seasonal indicator than
Speaker 3: even the weather. It's Ali Ward. It's also Native American
Speaker 3: Heritage Month and there are more episodes with Indigenous ologists
Speaker 3: linked in the show notes whole bunch of them, and
Speaker 3: I wanted to take this episode though, and just lay
Speaker 3: it gently on your pillow. If you've heard it before,
Speaker 3: listen again because I called it when it originally aired
Speaker 3: two years ago.
Speaker 4: Let's go.
Speaker 3: This is an episode you're going to listen to one
Speaker 3: than once. I'm going to tell you right now, not
Speaker 3: because the subject matter demands it for a 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 mythbusting. Okay, let me just run through the thanks.
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: We'll repost you. Thanks to everyone who rates and subscribes
Speaker 3: and leaves reviews. I read all of them and to
Speaker 3: help Ologies stay at the top of the science charts,
Speaker 3: and this is a fresh review from twenty twenty two
Speaker 3: from Aver, who said, Allie, if we were in the
Speaker 3: same state, I would be your friend forever. But if
Speaker 3: you're ever in Montana, hit me up. Aver. I'm in
Speaker 3: Montana sometimes and I need to go there to see
Speaker 3: a man about a beaver, so I may holler. Also,
Speaker 3: hello to the gaggle of restoration nerds who tune in
Speaker 3: from the South Salish Sea. Keep doing the sheep science.
Speaker 3: I read all our reviews. I'm telling you, thank you
Speaker 3: so much. Okay, briology moss talk brio and Greek straight
Speaker 3: up means moss, So thank you Greek. That was quick.
Speaker 3: So this briologist is perhaps the most beloved in her field.
Speaker 1: She got her.
Speaker 3: BS in botany from Sunni Environmental Science and Forestry and
Speaker 3: a master's and a PhD in botany from the University
Speaker 3: of Wisconsin. She has published numerous papers on mosses and
Speaker 3: plants and traditional ecological knowledge. She is a distinguished teaching professor.
Speaker 3: She covers botany, ethnobotany, indigenous environmental issues. She's been a
Speaker 3: tech speaker. She's an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatami
Speaker 3: Nation and the author of two huge books, The Gorgeous
Speaker 3: Gathering Moss, a natural and cultural history of mosses, and
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 4: Virtually.
Speaker 3: I have listened to this ologist's velvety, soft voice via
Speaker 3: audio books so much that I was so nervous. I
Speaker 3: was afraid I'd be too loud or jarring, or I'd
Speaker 3: make an airhorn noise with my mouth. So I did
Speaker 3: my best just to keep calm. And this episode is
Speaker 3: just a gorgeous stroll through the forest floor, an I
Speaker 3: opening loop, squinting gaze at hidden mysteries, and an intro
Speaker 3: to your new hero. We cover what is a moss?
Speaker 3: Where do they grow? Eat them? Should you have one
Speaker 3: as a bath matt? Are they soft to nap on?
Speaker 3: What's up with Lichen? How to incorporate your native teaching
Speaker 3: into your science work, or how to recognize and appreciate
Speaker 3: indigenous knowledge without appropriating it and moss smoothies with the
Speaker 3: moss wonderful biologist doctor Robin wall Camer.
Speaker 4: Of course, well there's that.
Speaker 3: And so now you're talking to me from New York
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 4: Yes, I live in upstate New York.
Speaker 3: How are the seasons changing right now?
Speaker 4: Oh, it is just the height of June. I live
Speaker 4: out in farm country, and so it's hay making weather.
Speaker 4: So the air is just full of the wonderful scent
Speaker 4: of new cut hay and wildflowers. It's really sort of
Speaker 4: 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 wild growth.
Speaker 4: You know, it's really almost impossible for me to pinpoint
Speaker 4: that because I just grew up in the natural world.
Speaker 4: It was always part of my being and part of
Speaker 4: my family experience, and so it's it's hard to say
Speaker 4: there was a moment when I really connected. But I
Speaker 4: had the benefit of a rural childhood and parents who
Speaker 4: were avid outdoors people and naturalists, and I think that
Speaker 4: I was mostly shaped by these old farm fields that
Speaker 4: were around where I grew up. That meadow kind of
Speaker 4: array of wildflowers and wild strawberries and all of that
Speaker 4: was certainly the formative landscape for me as a naturalist.
Speaker 4: I'd call it my backyard, except it was, you know,
Speaker 4: the landscape, not my yard.
Speaker 3: And what about different plants? What drew you to mosses
Speaker 3: in particular?
Speaker 4: You know, it's an odd story in that I've always been,
Speaker 4: of course drawn to plants. And when I went away
Speaker 4: to college to be a botany major, I took every
Speaker 4: botany class I could get my hands on, and there
Speaker 4: were a lot of them, and the only one I
Speaker 4: didn't take was the ecology of mosses. No, really, I
Speaker 4: left it till the last I thought, oh, really, you know,
Speaker 4: it's just this tiny, little green fit. How could that
Speaker 4: be interesting? So I'm really familiar with this notion of
Speaker 4: the overlooked world because I did it myself. I was
Speaker 4: really interested in forest ecology, and so I overlooked the mosses.
Speaker 4: But then I took one class in it. That moment
Speaker 4: I remember it was the first day of my Ecology
Speaker 4: of Mosses class, and putting a lens on the on
Speaker 4: the mosses and seeing a forest in miniature and it
Speaker 4: was love at first sight.
Speaker 3: So yeah, And I remember in gathering moss, you mentioned
Speaker 3: that you had kind of a loop, a magnifying glass
Speaker 3: and uh and you you spent some of your some
Speaker 3: of your money to get your own uh huh. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I still have it.
Speaker 4: When I think of the innumerable objects I have lost
Speaker 4: in my life, I have never lost my loop.
Speaker 3: And Okay, I'm here to ask then, not smartest questions
Speaker 3: for all of us, So let's do let's just do it.
Speaker 3: What is a moss for someone who doesn't know, well,
Speaker 3: how do you even define a moss?
Speaker 4: I'm glad you asked, because when people hear about my
Speaker 4: passion for mosses, they look at me really funny and
Speaker 4: they think, like, you mean that green scum, Like, no, no,
Speaker 4: I don't mean green scum. Mosses are the oldest plants
Speaker 4: on the planet. People say they're primitive. Really they're very sophisticated,
Speaker 4: I think, but they're primitive because they're so small and simple.
Speaker 4: That's why people classify them that way. But mosses are
Speaker 4: members of the plant kingdom, the first plants to colonize
Speaker 4: land three hundred and fifty million years ago. When I
Speaker 4: think about what is a moss, A moss is really
Speaker 4: 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 I Shrunk the Biologist? I most definitely did. And
Speaker 3: they do. They have root systems that are much different
Speaker 3: than trees. How are they able to cling to so
Speaker 3: many surfaces?
Speaker 4: Well, that's really the important question, you know, when you
Speaker 4: said what is a moss? Oftentimes the best way to
Speaker 4: answer that is what do mosses not have? Ali They
Speaker 4: don't even have roots. Really, no, these are not rooted plants,
Speaker 4: and that's how they can cling. They do have these
Speaker 4: little threadlike structures called rhizoids, which allow them to attach,
Speaker 4: but they're not absorptive the way roots are. They don't
Speaker 4: have the capacity to take up water and nutrients. They're
Speaker 4: 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: The is hunkered down.
Speaker 4: And so when we think about what mosses are, one
Speaker 4: of the ways to characterize them is by what they
Speaker 4: don't have. In comparison to all the plants that are
Speaker 4: around us. They don't have roots, they don't have flowers,
Speaker 4: they don't have the xylum and flow them, that vascular
Speaker 4: tissue that allows water to be moved within the plant.
Speaker 4: They don't have any of that. And yet they're able
Speaker 4: to occupy virtually every habitat on the planet and endure
Speaker 4: all kinds of different kinds of environments. So they're super simple.
Speaker 4: But in their simplicity is kind of the key to
Speaker 4: their success.
Speaker 3: And so without flowering, they reproduce with spores.
Speaker 4: They do yep, just like in higher plants, there are
Speaker 4: females and males. There are eggs and sperm tucked in
Speaker 4: among the little tiny leaves of the m and you know,
Speaker 4: like flowering plants, we know about insects moving pollen around
Speaker 4: for fertilization. For mosses, it's they need water for that
Speaker 4: to happen. There has to be a continuous bridge of
Speaker 4: water between male and female for the sperm to swim along,
Speaker 4: sometimes just along the surface of a leaf to go
Speaker 4: find the female.
Speaker 3: So the water acts like the ultimate wingman, just passing
Speaker 3: along sperm like a note and class like hey, uh,
Speaker 3: my friend wanted you to have this that boom, you're
Speaker 3: pregnant with moss babies.
Speaker 4: And once the sperm does fertilize that egg, yeah, then
Speaker 4: it sends up this little stalk called a sporophyte that
Speaker 4: will puff out clouds of spores that will go off
Speaker 4: and germinate. They don't make seeds, but they work from
Speaker 4: 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 3: all of this drama is happening, all of this drama. Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: and you.
Speaker 4: Know it's like anything. The closer you look, the more
Speaker 4: drama you see. And if you start to set aside
Speaker 4: those notions of what mosses don't have and say, okay,
Speaker 4: I think of mosses as real rule breakers in the
Speaker 4: plant kingdom because they live their lives in ways that
Speaker 4: are so different than all of the other plants. But yeah,
Speaker 4: when you start to pay attention, they are successful because
Speaker 4: of their differences, I guess would be the way to
Speaker 4: say that, yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, where can they grow? You mentioned that they're
Speaker 3: ta can inhabit all these places other plants can't. I'm
Speaker 3: trying to picture like the outer reaches, like where are
Speaker 3: some of the most surprising places mosses have been found.
Speaker 4: One of the mosses can grow pretty much anywhere. The
Speaker 4: only place that they can't tolerate are salty environments. So
Speaker 4: they're not in the ocean, they're not in the seashore,
Speaker 4: but every place else they occur. And we tend to
Speaker 4: think about mosses as like you said, being on a
Speaker 4: wet log. They're in a shady forest, they're next to
Speaker 4: a waterfall or a stream or a bog wet places.
Speaker 4: But one of the most surprising places to find them
Speaker 4: is in the desert.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there are mosses that live off from morning dew
Speaker 4: in the desert. That's all the water they ever get.
Speaker 4: So to me, those are some of the most surprising
Speaker 4: and one of the beauties of when you ask where
Speaker 4: do mosses live, there's the big answer of everywhere except
Speaker 4: for marine environments. But if we go to smaller to
Speaker 4: think about the world, like a moss, losses live on
Speaker 4: surfaces for the most part, you know, think about where
Speaker 4: you see them. They're on logs, they're on trees, they're
Speaker 4: on rocks, they're on pavement in city mosses. Mostly they
Speaker 4: don't live on the soil, although some do because they're
Speaker 4: outcompeted by the bigger flowering, vascular plants. So they tuck
Speaker 4: themselves in on all of these surfaces where it doesn't
Speaker 4: matter if you don't have roots.
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. 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 4: Well, they are at the scale of a loop, and
Speaker 4: even at the scale of just being on your knees
Speaker 4: and looking carefully. One moss is as different from the
Speaker 4: next as a oak tree is from a birch tree
Speaker 4: from a pine tree. Their leaves might have toothed edges,
Speaker 4: the leaf might be pleated, the leaf might be round,
Speaker 4: it might be long, it might be like a hair
Speaker 4: like extension. There's tremendous diversity of form within the mosses,
Speaker 4: and that alone is a wonderful introduction to mosses, just
Speaker 4: to see that they have tiny stems and they have
Speaker 4: beautifully arrayed leaves. People think about them as a green film,
Speaker 4: almost like there's nothing structural within it. It's just like
Speaker 4: a green textile or something. But no, they are tiny
Speaker 4: little plants with world leaves and leaves that might be
Speaker 4: flattened spiraled. There's tremendous diversity of ways to be a moss.
Speaker 4: And that's why I always say to people. People say, oh, well,
Speaker 4: there's moss on that rock. Really, there's no such thing
Speaker 4: as moss. There are mosses on any given rock. There
Speaker 4: might be ten different kinds of moss that until you
Speaker 4: start to look, it just looks like green wallpaper. But
Speaker 4: then when you stop and look, you see that it's
Speaker 4: a whole world.
Speaker 3: And how are all of those different mosses categorized? How
Speaker 3: I know that they don't have a lot of common names.
Speaker 4: True, Unfortunately, mosses within sort of western natural history, shall
Speaker 4: we say, have been so overlooked that for the most part,
Speaker 4: they don't even have common names. Although just and there
Speaker 4: weren't even field guides to them until a few years ago,
Speaker 4: and there are now some nice photographic and drawing based
Speaker 4: field guides and some attempt to put common names on them.
Speaker 4: I'll admit they're not very interesting common names Hooker's branched
Speaker 4: carpet moss. You know, it's you know, not really very evocative.
Speaker 4: But maybe as people start looking more they'll they'll have better,
Speaker 4: 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 fluf? She was like, I'm good.
Speaker 4: I'm really more of a moss ecologist, and so I'm
Speaker 4: more interested in their relationships and their adaptive structures. And
Speaker 4: the names are convenient ways to discern one from the other,
Speaker 4: and of course they're important in understanding evolutionary really relationships.
Speaker 4: But my fascination with them is is much more in
Speaker 4: what they're doing rather than who they are in a
Speaker 4: in 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
Speaker 3: what are they what are they busy doing?
Speaker 4: Well, I'm so glad you asked, because they're they're tiny
Speaker 4: little plants and yet they have a huge role to play.
Speaker 4: Where to start. One of the most important things to
Speaker 4: think about in terms of the roles that mosses play
Speaker 4: is that their whole bodies, their whole way of being,
Speaker 4: is designed at the scale of water drops. They are
Speaker 4: designed to attract and hold water, and so one of
Speaker 4: their major roles is to do exactly that. Moss are
Speaker 4: like sponges. They hold the water and then they release
Speaker 4: it slowly into the environment, so they create humidity. For example,
Speaker 4: they also create a moist seed bed for other plants
Speaker 4: to seeds to fall on, and then those seeds are
Speaker 4: essentially falling on to a damp sponge that's holding on
Speaker 4: to that moisture. They are moisture holding capacity influences nutrients too.
Speaker 4: Think about that moss on a log that you were invoking, Well,
Speaker 4: if that moss is keeping the log damp by virtue
Speaker 4: of being a sponge, that means that the decay fungi
Speaker 4: are hard at work inside that log, breaking it down
Speaker 4: recycling nutrients much more effectively than if that log didn't
Speaker 4: have a moss blanket on it. So they keep the
Speaker 4: environment moist, which allows men and many other processes too unfold.
Speaker 4: That's certainly one of their major roles. You'll you'll have
Speaker 4: to turn me off, Ali as I know.
Speaker 3: I love this. My ears are open.
Speaker 4: Okay. One of the other things that I think people
Speaker 4: are fascinated to know is that mosses have been termed
Speaker 4: the coral reef of the forest because within a moss
Speaker 4: there are hundreds of little organisms living in that. When
Speaker 4: we say, well, the mosses are a miniature forest, they're
Speaker 4: not only a miniature forest of tiny little trees, but
Speaker 4: they have metaphorically birds living in that canopy. There are
Speaker 4: all kinds of invertebrates that travel up and down the
Speaker 4: trunks of the mosses, if you will, from the top
Speaker 4: of the moss canopy down to the soil. There are herbivores,
Speaker 4: there are grazers, there are predators. There's a whole food
Speaker 4: chain happening inside a little clump of moss.
Speaker 2: The most insane festival the world has ever seen.
Speaker 4: So they are tremendous reservoirs of biodiversity, and that's why
Speaker 4: they get called the coral reefs of the forest.
Speaker 3: And what eats moss? Who grazes on it? Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: a great question. For the most part, mosses are so
Speaker 3: well chemically defended that not much eats them. Within that
Speaker 3: little microcosm, there are some invertebrates which will eat them.
Speaker 3: The invertebrates that have piercing mouth parts will sometimes stick
Speaker 3: that stylet into a moss cell and take out the contents.
Speaker 3: There are some larvae that will actually consume the leaf,
Speaker 3: but for the most part, mosses themselves are not consumed.
Speaker 3: So what do I mean by grazers. Well, within that
Speaker 3: little moss forest, there are a little algae and bacteria
Speaker 3: and fungi that live on the moist moss leaf surface,
Speaker 3: and there are insects that come along, invertebrates excuse me,
Speaker 3: that come along and actually scrape off the little epiphytic
Speaker 3: algae and fungi, And that's what they're eating, not the moss.
Speaker 3: They're living this stuff. They're eating this stuff that's growing
Speaker 3: on the moss. Okay side note, epiphytic means stuff that
Speaker 3: grows on other stuff. So any epiphyte is a plant
Speaker 3: that grows on another plant and just needs air and moisture.
Speaker 3: It's not parasite, it's just chillin. It just uses the
Speaker 3: other plant for support. Few epiphytes are mosses, air plants, orchids.
Speaker 3: And Spanish moss, which is not a moss. It's just
Speaker 3: named after its resemblance to a beard lichen. But it's
Speaker 3: also not a lichen, nor is it from Spain. So
Speaker 3: whenever you feel bad about yourself, just remember people had
Speaker 3: three shots to name Spanish moss and they screwed up
Speaker 3: three times. So you're doing fine, buddy. Oh and what
Speaker 3: kind of chemical defenses are the mosses producing.
Speaker 4: Well, I guess I should back up to answer that
Speaker 4: to say that that for the most part, vertebrates do
Speaker 4: not eat mosses. The only ones that do birds will
Speaker 4: sometimes eat the capsules, the sporophytes, which are protein rich,
Speaker 4: but they almost never eat the leafy part of the plant,
Speaker 4: in large part because that leafy part of the plant
Speaker 4: is so low in nutrients. It's mostly just sell wall
Speaker 4: and water. There's not a lot of sugars or proteins
Speaker 4: in those leaves, so it's kind of a why bother.
Speaker 4: You shouldn't eat them because they're nothing but fiber, and
Speaker 4: they have a lot of anti microbials in them, and
Speaker 4: that's where the chemical defenses men. I mean, if you
Speaker 4: think about it, it's a superb adaptation because mosses live
Speaker 4: on wet surfaces, right, They live on bark and soil
Speaker 4: and logs and rocks, and so therefore they would be
Speaker 4: subject you would think, to attack by fun dry and
Speaker 4: by bacteria. But they have over a long evolutionary history
Speaker 4: they have antimicrobials, primarily polyphenolic compounds and tannins that are
Speaker 4: in those leaves that make them unpalatable as well as
Speaker 4: 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 phenol groups. A phenol is a
Speaker 3: C six H five Oh. So, Polyphenols can do things
Speaker 3: like relief or suppressed growth hormones. They can protect plants
Speaker 3: from u V rays, they can deter moss munchers. They
Speaker 3: can even signal to other plants like hey, what's up,
Speaker 3: let's ripen. They can also fight infections, and those last
Speaker 3: types are called phyto alexins in case you're ever in
Speaker 3: need of that word. Now, a tannin is a type
Speaker 3: of polyphenol, And if you've ever had like a dry
Speaker 3: tongue feeling from red wine or a green banana, or
Speaker 3: God forbid you eat an unripe per cinmon, which is
Speaker 3: so cringe inducing you you might as well just try
Speaker 3: to get a tongue transplant, because it's brutal. It's game over.
Speaker 3: But yeah, then you've had tannins. Now, what if you
Speaker 3: ate stuff that other people don't want to eat? Would
Speaker 3: anyone want to eat you? And have those antimgroobical properties
Speaker 3: ever been used by other animals in their own defense
Speaker 3: against microscopic critters.
Speaker 4: There's a hypothesis that exactly that, because the only place
Speaker 4: in the world that vertebrates do eat mosses is in
Speaker 4: the Arctic. Caribou will eat mosses, lemmings and voles will
Speaker 4: eat mosses, and some of the studies have suggested that
Speaker 4: while they might eat them, they can't digest them. You know,
Speaker 4: there's really just not much there to digest. But there's
Speaker 4: a suspicion that they eat them because of their antimicrobial properties,
Speaker 4: and that they may do something to regulate digestion in
Speaker 4: the animals. It's not well understood, but animals do exploit
Speaker 4: the antimicrobial properties of mosses, including things like birds. Mosses
Speaker 4: are really prime materials for nest building by songbirds. You'll
Speaker 4: often see songbirds foraging for mosses and they'll be flying
Speaker 4: around with trailing some brack athesium from their beaks and
Speaker 4: they build it into their nest and it's soft, it's insulating,
Speaker 4: but it's also antimicrobial. And the birds that primarily use
Speaker 4: mosses in their nests are the songbirds that whose babies
Speaker 4: actually poop in the nest, and so those the mosses
Speaker 4: in the nest are thought to have a hygienic effect
Speaker 4: on reducing the microbial load in the bird nest.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's so fascinating. I mean, in lieu of diapers,
Speaker 3: just have yes, yes, you can't body train a tiny bird, it's.
Speaker 4: True, but you know you're right. But in fact, perhaps
Speaker 4: you know mosses have long been used as diapers for
Speaker 4: by humans.
Speaker 3: Really, yes, yes, okay, tell me a little bit about
Speaker 3: that if you don't mind. Oh, no, of course not.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Because of mosses absorbents, this ability to grab onto
Speaker 4: and hold water like a sponge, they've been very important
Speaker 4: culturally and ethnobotanically among indigenous peoples worldwide, and one of
Speaker 4: the very common uses for mosses is in diapering, and
Speaker 4: because the mosses are so absorbent of water, you put
Speaker 4: that dry moss around the baby. And in fact, in
Speaker 4: my culture and potaotomy culture, we talk about wrapping the
Speaker 4: baby in what's called a moss bag, and so you
Speaker 4: stuff that bag with dry moss and then it's it's absorbent.
Speaker 4: It's like a disposable diaper, but it's also antimicrobial. So
Speaker 4: you have this absorbent, antiseptic, soft insulating diapering material. So
Speaker 4: that's that's just one of the cultural uses of mosses
Speaker 4: that exploits their ability to hold water and to have
Speaker 4: these defensive chemicals in.
Speaker 3: Them in gathering moss. Doctor Kimmer also mentions moss's use
Speaker 3: as a sanitary napkin, which she describes as difficult information
Speaker 3: to track down because ethnographers collecting these stories probably did
Speaker 3: not have vaginas, so they didn't ask. But with all
Speaker 3: due respect, who knows how many stories have been lost
Speaker 3: of period havers joking in their native language about having
Speaker 3: to ride the green carpet that week. Too many to count,
Speaker 3: and I'm sad about it. I asked her what else
Speaker 3: she came across in her research. If there's anything about
Speaker 3: that you'd love to share, I know I'd love.
Speaker 4: To hear it. Sure, there are long lists of the
Speaker 4: ways that people have traditionally used mosses. Diapering is certainly
Speaker 4: one of them, but they're also really commonly used for insulation.
Speaker 4: If you think again about mosses as being absorptive, they're
Speaker 4: holding water well when they're dry, all those little capillary
Speaker 4: spaces that would hold water when they're dry, they're holding air.
Speaker 4: So it's air space. It's contained air space between leaves,
Speaker 4: in between cells, and that's essentially like closed cell foam insulation.
Speaker 4: And so people for a long time used mosses as
Speaker 4: insulation in boots and mittens and hats and bedrolls, and
Speaker 4: so long as it's dry, it's really effective insulation. It
Speaker 4: was even used architecturally in things like wigwams. Traditional wigwams
Speaker 4: for the wintertime would have one dome and then another
Speaker 4: dome inside it, and then that intervening space would be
Speaker 4: packed with dry moss and excellent insulating material. So all
Speaker 4: kinds of uses for briefites.
Speaker 3: I'm also trying to figure out how they photosynthesize in
Speaker 3: under such a dense canopy. How are they doing that?
Speaker 4: That's a great question because many mosses are thriving at
Speaker 4: something like five percent of the ambient available sunshine right.
Speaker 3: Living on only five percent sunlight, like het the dimmer switch,
Speaker 3: they don't care. They're moss.
Speaker 4: They got this and their balance of chlorophyll A, B,
Speaker 4: and C is adjusted to the spectrum of wavelengths of
Speaker 4: light which is available to them in the dense shade.
Speaker 4: So they actually have a different pigment balance and modified
Speaker 4: photosynthetic pathway that allows them to be efficient at really
Speaker 4: low light levels. But it also comes from the fact
Speaker 4: that they don't grow very fast, they don't get very big,
Speaker 4: they don't have really high energetic demands either. So it's
Speaker 4: this matter of adapting to the resources that are available
Speaker 4: to them and doing it superbly. But at the same time,
Speaker 4: there are mosses that live in full sun in the desert,
Speaker 4: and so they're able to utilize different wavelengths of light
Speaker 4: 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 Kimer dishes.
Speaker 4: But you know, this gets us to one of the
Speaker 4: other totally amazing thing about losses is that think about
Speaker 4: that desert moss for a second. You know, it has
Speaker 4: no asylum and fluam, It has no roots, it has
Speaker 4: no way to store water. So what happens to it
Speaker 4: is that it dries up. It dries up and becomes
Speaker 4: this just little black crust on a rock or in
Speaker 4: a soil crevice, and if you just walked by it,
Speaker 4: you'd think it was dead. But it's not dead. It's
Speaker 4: just waiting. And mosses are what are known as poikilo hydric,
Speaker 4: which is well, you know, there's poikolo thermic, right for
Speaker 4: cold blooded animals, animals whose temperature is the same temperature
Speaker 4: as the environment. For mosses, they're poikola hydric. Their water
Speaker 4: content reflects the water content in the environment. So when
Speaker 4: it dries out, the moss dries out. But unlike the
Speaker 4: plant on your windowsill that gets crisp and it's done for, right,
Speaker 4: the mosses are not done for. They go into this
Speaker 4: state of I guess we'd just call it sort of
Speaker 4: a suspended animation, and they're dry and crisp and just
Speaker 4: sitting there. They can't photosynthesize unless they're wet but they're
Speaker 4: just waiting and then it rains. Within twenty five minutes,
Speaker 4: they're back to full photosynthesis. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: 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 4: Hey, great question, because lichens and mosses often live together
Speaker 4: right at the same scale, and lichens are not differentiated
Speaker 4: like a plant into stem and leaves. Lichens are going
Speaker 4: to be a phallus right, sometimes powdery, sometimes kind of leathery,
Speaker 4: but they're not going to have a stem with leaves
Speaker 4: on it. Where's mosses? Due? And lichens, which by the way,
Speaker 4: are also Poikola hydric, have this amazing water stress tolerance.
Speaker 4: They tend towards the spectrum of gray and blue and
Speaker 4: sometimes have olive green as well as the core just
Speaker 4: orange and yellow ones, colors that you don't see in mosses,
Speaker 4: but a real grassy greens. Our mosses well, except for
Speaker 4: the ones who live in the desert, and they are
Speaker 4: black and crusty, and that the blackness of the mosses
Speaker 4: are caused by these flavonoid pigments, and it's essentially sunscreen.
Speaker 4: The mosses have laid down this pigment layer to prevent
Speaker 4: them from having the photosynthesis and the chlorophyll being photodegraded
Speaker 4: in the intense sunlight.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that's so smart. What about how airflow
Speaker 3: influences their growth?
Speaker 4: What a good question? Thank you?
Speaker 3: Oh man. I have been so nervous to meet her
Speaker 3: because she's so cool and I like her book so much,
Speaker 3: and every time she says I have a good question,
Speaker 3: I just want you to know that I'm just like
Speaker 3: floating on air currents inside, like oh like, I'm blushing
Speaker 3: talking about her right now, Okay.
Speaker 4: Anyway, airflow, of course, is going to make things dry
Speaker 4: out right, It's going to sweep that water away. It's
Speaker 4: going to increase evaporation. And because mosses can only photosynthesize
Speaker 4: when they're both wet and illuminated, airflow can be a
Speaker 4: great detriment to the growth of mosses. And that's one
Speaker 4: of the reasons they are so small. Because it turns
Speaker 4: out that there are places in the world, in the
Speaker 4: whole landscape right where airflow is minimal. Those places of
Speaker 4: minimal airflow, or what are known as the boundary layer,
Speaker 4: and a boundary layer is this area of extremely still
Speaker 4: air right at the surface of any surface, a log,
Speaker 4: a rock, a tree, your house. There's this little area
Speaker 4: of still air. And because in that space the wind
Speaker 4: doesn't blow, there's just so much friction with the surface.
Speaker 4: This region of still air is where mosses live. It's
Speaker 4: they live within the boundary layer, and that way they
Speaker 4: can stay moist. They don't have so much evaporation because
Speaker 4: of wind flow. And if the mosses got bigger than
Speaker 4: the boundary layer, which is created by their surface, they
Speaker 4: would dry out. And you can almost measure the depth
Speaker 4: of the boundary layer by the height of the mosses.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 3: So that's ecologically, that's part of the puzzle and how
Speaker 3: it all fits together.
Speaker 4: Absolutely absolutely, and that's why in the desert on a rock,
Speaker 4: the mosses are teasy. You know, they might only be
Speaker 4: a couple of millimeters tall because they have to stay
Speaker 4: within the boundary layer of that rock surface, Whereas if
Speaker 4: they're living under the shady, moist canopy of a hemlock tree,
Speaker 4: they can be five inches tall because there's a much
Speaker 4: big boundary layer there in the because of the trees
Speaker 4: overhead and the logs that they might be living on,
Speaker 4: so they can live within that little area. That little
Speaker 4: boundary layer is not only a place where the wind
Speaker 4: doesn't blow, where theoretically it's absolutely still air, but if
Speaker 4: you think about every surface of having this little boundary
Speaker 4: layer over it, it also means that within that area
Speaker 4: it's warmer because the sun will shine on the log,
Speaker 4: let's say, and then it's re radiated as heat, and
Speaker 4: that heat doesn't blow away, there's not as much convection,
Speaker 4: and so it's caught in this little boundary layer. The
Speaker 4: moisture that's coming off from that log gets caught in
Speaker 4: the boundary layer. So mosses essentially are inhabiting a little greenhouse,
Speaker 4: a little greenhouse that lives that occurs naturally over every surface,
Speaker 4: a place which is warmer, moister, and, as it happens,
Speaker 4: richer in carbon dioxide than anyplace else, and that's where
Speaker 4: the mosses live. They're exploiting these little microhabitats that rather
Speaker 4: than trying to dominate and control the habitat, they're taking
Speaker 4: advantage of the laws of physics and exploiting these naturally
Speaker 4: occurring little greenhouses.
Speaker 3: You know, that brings me to a question we like
Speaker 3: to debunk flimplam. We like tom bust myths with ologism.
Speaker 3: We can, But is there truth that moss tends to
Speaker 3: grow on the north side of trunks? Or is that
Speaker 3: total bunk?
Speaker 4: It's so great that the one thing people think they
Speaker 4: know about mosses isn't true. No, this idea that moss
Speaker 4: only grows on the north side of the tree, No,
Speaker 4: if you use that for direction finding, you would be
Speaker 4: going in circles.
Speaker 3: It is true.
Speaker 4: It is true that mosses will grow more prolifically in
Speaker 4: the cooler, shadier place. And are the north sides of
Speaker 4: trees cooler and shadier than the south side? Sure, unless
Speaker 4: there's a forest gap overhead, or unless that tree is
Speaker 4: leaning in a certain angle, unless there's a ravine over
Speaker 4: there so many other factors that influence it. I think
Speaker 4: the only place that it would really make sense as
Speaker 4: a wavefinder is in places that are totally flat with
Speaker 4: a uniform kind of forest vegetation. And so it might be,
Speaker 4: and there's greater evidence for this in the boreal forest.
Speaker 4: There is more moss growth on the north side of
Speaker 4: the tree, but only in those circumstances of flat terrain
Speaker 4: and homogeneous vegetation, no recompassed.
Speaker 3: Instead, your moss is not your GPS. And I wanted
Speaker 3: to ask before we get into listener questions a little
Speaker 3: bit about about your writing, because it's kind of surreal
Speaker 3: to talk to you, because I've listened to your audiobooks
Speaker 3: because you you narrate them, you read them, and you're
Speaker 3: so you have such a wonderful voice and cadence. But
Speaker 3: you know, when you when you first decided to write
Speaker 3: Gathering Moss, you know what really moved you to take
Speaker 3: that sabbatical and put all of this work into words.
Speaker 4: You know, Ellie, it really came from a certain kind
Speaker 4: of frustration of only writing for peer reviewed, technical scientific audience,
Speaker 4: in that I've spent so many wonderful years of my
Speaker 4: life learning from mosses, of just being with them, and
Speaker 4: when I test a hypothesis and report on it in
Speaker 4: an article for the Bryologist, everything that I've learned had
Speaker 4: to be boiled down into data tables and p values
Speaker 4: and there was no room in that kind of writing
Speaker 4: for wonder or for talking about the amazing little things
Speaker 4: that you see and the things that the mosses have
Speaker 4: to teach you. And there came to be a place where, ironically,
Speaker 4: as a scientist, I felt like I couldn't really tell
Speaker 4: the truth by using only scientific writing, and so, having
Speaker 4: been given this privilege I've spent in my career among mosses,
Speaker 4: I felt like I really needed to do justice to
Speaker 4: the mosses and tell a little bit more about how
Speaker 4: they live their lives and their incredible ways of being
Speaker 4: and lessons that they have for so I set myself
Speaker 4: this goal to see if I could write in such
Speaker 4: a way that people could fall in love with mosses.
Speaker 4: And that was really my intent, tell the truth about
Speaker 4: mosses in such a way that that these overlooked, ancient,
Speaker 4: wonderful little beings would get a chance to tell their story.
Speaker 3: And you you even personal experience and observation and setting
Speaker 3: an atmosphere so well as well as you know your
Speaker 3: your history and your indigenous culture which breeding sweetgrass also
Speaker 3: just hit the New York Times bestseller list too, write
Speaker 3: a few months ago. Congratulations on that. Yeah, thanks, you know,
Speaker 3: can you tell me a little bit about what that's
Speaker 3: meant to you to get to express that to a
Speaker 3: more public audience than you know, just your students or
Speaker 3: other biologists.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it has been so gratifying and admittedly very surprising
Speaker 4: to see their response to both of these books, in
Speaker 4: particular Breeding sweet Grass. For me, it has been so
Speaker 4: hopeful because I really have this sense, with both Gathering
Speaker 4: Moss and Breeding sweet Grass, that those books are meant
Speaker 4: to awaken something in reader's this sense of wonder for sure,
Speaker 4: but also the sense of wisdom of the living world,
Speaker 4: the wisdom that plants have for us. And I'm so
Speaker 4: gratified to know that people are open to that idea,
Speaker 4: that they're open to think about learning not just about plants,
Speaker 4: but learning from plants, and willing to walk that path
Speaker 4: with me as a writer of trying on these different
Speaker 4: perspectives of let's look at the world through the lens
Speaker 4: of indigenous ways of being, let's look at the world
Speaker 4: through the lens of a tree or a lichen, and
Speaker 4: what might we learn? And it's just been so rewarding
Speaker 4: to have readers from so many different places and cultures
Speaker 4: and experiences embrace that. And it makes me so happy
Speaker 4: to think that the plants' stories get to be shared
Speaker 4: so widely, and that it might ignite even more stories
Speaker 4: of people and their relationship two plants. I've got sixteen plants.
Speaker 3: And I have so many questions from listeners. Obviously we're
Speaker 3: not going to get to all three hundred and sixteen
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 5: Goodness, people, I hope there's some overlap. There's some overlap,
Speaker 5: but people are excited and I'll just dive in. If
Speaker 5: that's okay, you bet okay. So we will get to
Speaker 5: those questions in just a moment. But first, a word
Speaker 5: from sponsors who make it possible for us to donate
Speaker 5: to a cause close to the heart of theologist, and
Speaker 5: this week a donation is going straight to sunni's College
Speaker 5: of Environmental Science and Forestries Center for Native Peoples and
Speaker 5: the Environment, which was founded by none other than doctor
Speaker 5: Robin kimber So. They are located within the original territory
Speaker 5: of the Hottness Sauni or Iroquois Confederacy, with a mission
Speaker 5: to create programs that draw on the wisdom of both
Speaker 5: indigenous and scientific knowledge in support of shared goals of
Speaker 5: environmental sustainability, and the center includes a significant outreach element
Speaker 5: that's focused on increasing educational opportunities for Native American students
Speaker 5: in environmental sciences. There are also research collaborations partners with
Speaker 5: Native American communities to address local environmental problems. There are
Speaker 5: scholarships and fellowships also available. We're also sending a donation,
Speaker 5: per doctor Kimerer to the American Indian Science and Engineering Society,
Speaker 5: whose goal is to substantially increase the representation of American Indian,
Speaker 5: Alaska Native, Native, Hawaiian, Pacific Islander First Nation and other
Speaker 5: Indigenous peoples of North America in the fields of science, technology, engineering, math,
Speaker 5: and other related disciplines. Now, they were founded in nineteen
Speaker 5: seventy seven and they have awarded nearly twelve million in
Speaker 5: counting in academic scholarships. They also offer internships, professional development conferences,
Speaker 5: and more so. First donation was to the ESF Center
Speaker 5: for Native Peoples and the Environment, and another donation to
Speaker 5: the American Indian Science and Engineering Society. Thank you for
Speaker 5: the heads up on those, doctor kimber So. A donation
Speaker 5: went to them thanks to some sponsors who you may
Speaker 5: hear about.
Speaker 3: Now.
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Speaker 3: Okay and now onto questions submitted by beloved patrons see
Speaker 3: there's one first time question. Asker Siguani Dana says, I
Speaker 3: am Panabskat, a tribe from Maine, and I also teach
Speaker 3: high school science. And I find that I feel like
Speaker 3: I live in two worlds and they often clash. How
Speaker 3: do you mentally bridge indigenous culture and intuition with Western science?
Speaker 3: And I hope I read that earlier and I tried
Speaker 3: to make I pronounce it right, but I'm not sure
Speaker 3: if I did, and I will re recorded it, but
Speaker 3: I didn't.
Speaker 4: No, it's perfect it was perfect. Yeah, and I'm really
Speaker 4: grateful for that question. And I think one of the
Speaker 4: ways that I try to bridge that that I work
Speaker 4: both in my own writing and with my own teaching,
Speaker 4: is to think about the fact that within indigenous knowledge systems,
Speaker 4: we recognize that that human people have at least four
Speaker 4: different ways of understanding the world. Certainly with the intellect
Speaker 4: absolutely mental way of processing and generating information. We also
Speaker 4: have physical knowledge from observation, from measurement, right from sensing
Speaker 4: the world. But if we continue around that, think of
Speaker 4: it as this medicine wheel model. We have the knowledge
Speaker 4: of the mind, the knowledge of the body in two
Speaker 4: of them those quadrants. But then we have an emotional
Speaker 4: intelligence and we have spiritual knowledge spiritual ways of knowing,
Speaker 4: and all of those ways of knowing are valid and important.
Speaker 4: They're like different tools that you deploy for different purposes,
Speaker 4: for different questions that you might have. So that's a
Speaker 4: very holistic way of thinking about knowledge as embracing all
Speaker 4: of those ways. But in Western science we've truncated that.
Speaker 4: In Western science we privilege the knowledge of the intellect
Speaker 4: and that which we can measure and very explicitly set
Speaker 4: aside emotional and spiritual knowledge and say that doesn't count,
Speaker 4: that doesn't matter, that's not the real, valid knowledge. And
Speaker 4: so the scientific way of knowing is a subset of
Speaker 4: indigenous knowledge. And that's the way I try to present it,
Speaker 4: is that one is a subset of the other. Each
Speaker 4: of them has these powerful ways of knowing, engaging different
Speaker 4: tools that we as people have, And the real key
Speaker 4: to navigating that boundary of two worlds which I experience
Speaker 4: and understand is to think about them as of different gifts,
Speaker 4: of different tools. And when you have a true false question,
Speaker 4: the scientific ways of knowing and hypothesis testing, that's a
Speaker 4: darn good tool for a true false question. But what
Speaker 4: are your questions bigger than that? Then you need not
Speaker 4: only what is true, but what is right and what
Speaker 4: is meaningful and what are the implications of it? And
Speaker 4: then that the wholesm of indigenous knowledge can bring you
Speaker 4: to wisdom rather than just information. 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 Leanna mac bridgid Gwen Kelly and Segatta Darcy all
Speaker 3: submitted awesome questions. Wanting to know if you think there
Speaker 3: are any good tools for non indigenous folks to sort
Speaker 3: 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: Bryce 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 4: Yeah, excellent question, And I think that this I'll return
Speaker 4: to that to the prior question, because these ways of
Speaker 4: knowing that we might call indigenous ways of knowing, you know, mind, body, emotion, spirit,
Speaker 4: those are human ways of knowing, you know, and so
Speaker 4: bringing one's full humanity to being a scientist and teaching
Speaker 4: science is I think really important. But more specifically to
Speaker 4: the question of how to teach about indigenous ways of
Speaker 4: knowing without appropriating. One of the most important things to
Speaker 4: do is what we do in Western science as well,
Speaker 4: and that cite your sources right acknowledge where that knowledge
Speaker 4: came from, and not to portray it as one's own,
Speaker 4: but to give full credit to the people who created
Speaker 4: that knowledge, who learned these things, passed them on. And
Speaker 4: to me, that is a is the first step is
Speaker 4: to know where that knowledge came from, and and to
Speaker 4: to honor it and and essentially cite it the way
Speaker 4: that we that we do in Western science. I think
Speaker 4: it's also really important to when we're avoiding cultural appropriation,
Speaker 4: to have an authentic experience of engagement with place. You
Speaker 4: don't need to say, well, Native people tell us to
Speaker 4: be grateful for the gifts of plants around us. Yes,
Speaker 4: that's absolutely true. But the way that you manifest that
Speaker 4: gratitude should be in your own cultural framework. You don't
Speaker 4: have to take another way of showing gratitude for the
Speaker 4: gifts of the earth. You can show it's your own way.
Speaker 4: And so coming up with us see expressions of your
Speaker 4: own relationship with the living world is a way to
Speaker 4: make your experiences much more powerful because they're your own,
Speaker 4: and it avoids cultural appropriation as well.
Speaker 3: That's a beautiful way to look at it. By the bye,
Speaker 3: I listened to some of gathering moss sitting on a
Speaker 3: rock under an oak tree in unseated Tongueva Territory in
Speaker 3: southern California. Now ten out of ten highly recommend enjoying
Speaker 3: her dulcet voice on a blanket watching squirrels, maybe on
Speaker 3: your city balcony, looking at a bee waggle its butt,
Speaker 3: or on a walk through the woods. Even more, finishing
Speaker 3: your taxes really actually no bad time or place, come
Speaker 3: to think of it. Anyway, this is a funny question,
Speaker 3: Rebecca Pancoast says, first time question asker. When I was little,
Speaker 3: I always imagined a patch of moss would be the
Speaker 3: most magical and comfortable place to take a nap. What
Speaker 3: species of moss do you think would make the best
Speaker 3: napping spot? And Emily Roth asked, also if you've ever
Speaker 3: slept on a bed of moss and if it's comfortable?
Speaker 4: The answer is yes, I sure have, and you know
Speaker 4: I'm not the only one. Of course. Moss as betting
Speaker 4: is a common traditional practice and even Linnaeus, you know,
Speaker 4: the so called father of western botany. Anyway, as if
Speaker 4: before Linnaeus people didn't have botany, that's a different story.
Speaker 4: But Linnaeus is said to have traveled with a bedroll
Speaker 4: made out of Politricum juniparrhinum, a wonderful mossy bedroll. So yeah,
Speaker 4: I've taken a nap on all kinds of mosses. But
Speaker 4: one of the things to be really sure about is
Speaker 4: to think again about that notion that they're sponges. They're
Speaker 4: full of water. So I have had many a wet
Speaker 4: ball them, thinking oh, this will be a really nice
Speaker 4: place to sit, and like, no, not so much.
Speaker 2: It'slight, soggy, bossom there.
Speaker 3: And you know to in terms of the things that
Speaker 3: are living in there too. Lillian Ladford and Julianne Gibson
Speaker 3: had similar questions. Lillian said, this is an adjacent question
Speaker 3: from their friend Emily Ford. Do you squeal and coup
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 4: Do you ever see the little moss piglets? Oh, they're
Speaker 4: just amazing, aren't they? Yes, I do squeal with delight
Speaker 4: such remarkable beings. And in terms of how many are
Speaker 4: in a little clump of moss, you know, that depends
Speaker 4: on the moss. Tartar grades especially like Sphagnum moss pete
Speaker 4: mosses because they're consistently moist. They also like the log mosses,
Speaker 4: those robust whifts that grow on logs, but the shorter
Speaker 4: turf mosses will hardly have any tartar grades in them.
Speaker 4: So the answer is the answer to most ecological questions.
Speaker 4: It depends, It depends.
Speaker 3: And if you're like a tartar grade, what's that? Oh well,
Speaker 3: welcome to the best thing you're ever gonna learn. 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 4: 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
Speaker 3: irl but now I know to go for the bigger,
Speaker 3: more robust, longer soggy mosses. Don't mess with the shorter
Speaker 3: turf mosses. There's no water bears there. That's not where
Speaker 3: the tardy parts. What do you is add and don't
Speaker 3: be tardy to the Tardi party or your asses grass
Speaker 3: Hey speaking of Andrea Kendall, Burnell, El McCall, Lee, Sarah Lucesi,
Speaker 3: Evan Jude, Amanda Mueller, whose name I say wrong every
Speaker 3: time I think it's Muller. I'm sorry, Courney, Ryan J Gordon,
Speaker 3: John Sanston, Allen Skelton, COLLEENI b Jessica Mezzla, Amelia Hines,
Speaker 3: Maggie Bender, Emily, Elaine Labord, Samantha Heineke, John Sanson, Nicole Wackery, Corlino,
Speaker 3: and not a cephalopod. All ask this next one. It's
Speaker 3: a good question. That's why so many people asked it.
Speaker 3: A bunch of people had questions about moss lawns replacing
Speaker 3: your lawn with something more sustainable and less water hungry.
Speaker 3: How do you feel about that?
Speaker 4: The answer there is also it depends.
Speaker 3: Bence.
Speaker 4: My take on the on moss lawns is that if
Speaker 4: the mosses come to your lawn, encourage them, help them
Speaker 4: become a moss lawn. But in most cases it is
Speaker 4: very difficult and not sustainable to try to replace a
Speaker 4: grass lawn with a moss lawn, because mosses will almost
Speaker 4: always lose to lose out in a competition to rooted plants.
Speaker 4: And there is this movement, oh well, let's go, let's
Speaker 4: go buy mosses and install them in our lawns so
Speaker 4: that we can have a lawn that we don't have
Speaker 4: to mow or water. If those mosses were capable of
Speaker 4: growing in that setting, they would probably already be there.
Speaker 4: I am really not a fan of the of the
Speaker 4: notion of transplanting mosses from the places where they are
Speaker 4: perfectly happy and doing their work and bringing them to
Speaker 4: places where they are not going to thrive. You can
Speaker 4: create the conditions for them. Always say to people when
Speaker 4: they ask me about this, if you build it, they
Speaker 4: will come. If you make a place which is moist
Speaker 4: and shady and not conducive to grass or ground cover,
Speaker 4: mosses will come there and they'll colonize it very happily.
Speaker 4: But for the most part, transplanting there's some exceptions to this,
Speaker 4: of course, for the most part, transplanting mosses or using
Speaker 4: this moss milkshake method for getting moss lawns started is
Speaker 4: I think unfair to mosses.
Speaker 3: That's good to know. If you're like, did she just
Speaker 3: say moss milkshake? Did I hear that?
Speaker 4: Right? She did? You did? So?
Speaker 3: A moss milkshake is something that you can purchase in
Speaker 3: what looks like a milk carton, or you can just
Speaker 3: wrap a 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.
Speaker 3: Also, some folks use this method to create a live murals,
Speaker 3: and if you don't believe me, you can google moss graffiti.
Speaker 3: So is your home even cute if it doesn't have
Speaker 3: a moss mural? Also, speaking of Pinterest design aspirations, a
Speaker 3: lot of people so many including Amy Carr am Weaver,
Speaker 3: Medicine John's, Molly Johnson, Lacy Ireton, Addie Cappello, and Brittany Panos,
Speaker 3: Megan Lucian, Al McCall, Catherine Warren, Kimberly McCall, and first
Speaker 3: time question asker Sekura wanted to know about this next one.
Speaker 3: What about bath mats? Have you seen this?
Speaker 5: I have no no and rule okay, And to summarize, no.
Speaker 4: Conclusion, no no to I put that in the realm
Speaker 4: of lost torture. Will will they absorb water? Sure they will.
Speaker 4: Will they like chemicals and soap scum and fluorescent light,
Speaker 4: No they will not, and they will they will just die?
Speaker 4: Leave them in the forest and have a cotton bath mat.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And that kind of brings me to my last
Speaker 3: question from listeners. Well, two people wrote in Addie Cappello
Speaker 3: and Carrie Simo. I'm not sure if those names are
Speaker 3: familiar to you, but they are both students of yours.
Speaker 3: It's kind of say those more familiar names, and Carrie
Speaker 3: is a former student, says I took briology and ethnobotany
Speaker 3: with doctor Kimmer at ESF two thousand and eight to
Speaker 3: twenty ten. I love you, doctor Kimer. You've been such
Speaker 3: an inspiration. Just mowsome and they are a restoration practitioner
Speaker 3: in Boulder County now and one of the questions that
Speaker 3: Carrie had was, is unsustainable harvest still an issue in
Speaker 3: the Pacific Northwest? Can we kind of discuss taking moss
Speaker 3: from one area and using it for something else? What
Speaker 3: should we know about that?
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for that question, because one of
Speaker 4: the unintended consequences, of course, of people coming to love
Speaker 4: mosses is that they want to commodify them, They want
Speaker 4: to have them around. And much of the unsustainable harvest
Speaker 4: of the epiphytic moss communities of the temperate rainforest and
Speaker 4: the Pacific Northwest is for horticultural work. You know, people
Speaker 4: are harvesting these old, beautiful moth carpets out of the
Speaker 4: woods and using them to line flower baskets or flower pots,
Speaker 4: or in some cases sewing them onto fabric to make
Speaker 4: these moss carpets for displays and so forth. The mosses
Speaker 4: grow back really quite slowly. It is I think an
Speaker 4: unsustainable practice at the at the current level, and especially
Speaker 4: when you think of everything that's lost by taking them,
Speaker 4: all those invertebrates, the coral reef of the forest, you know,
Speaker 4: made to line a flower pot. That doesn't seem to
Speaker 4: me to be an honorable way to relate to forest briefites.
Speaker 4: And there is a permit system in place in the
Speaker 4: Pacific Northwest to regulate moss harvest. I am not current
Speaker 4: at the moment state of affairs, but the last time
Speaker 4: I really looked into this, it was largely unenforced. There's
Speaker 4: there's there's a permit system, but nobody there enforcing it.
Speaker 4: So again, it's something that I would say is an
Speaker 4: unsustainable practice.
Speaker 3: M oh and one more questions. People are going to
Speaker 3: be so mad if I didn't ask how well Casey's
Speaker 3: sisterson wants to know, does the proverb a rolling stone
Speaker 3: gathers no moss bother you in terms of as though
Speaker 3: gathering moss was a bad thing. I guess.
Speaker 4: I've never understood that proverb. Somebody told me that what
Speaker 4: it really means is that if you don't stay put,
Speaker 4: you will never get rich, You'll never accumulate wealth, I e.
Speaker 4: Gather moss. I don't know if that's really what it means,
Speaker 4: what it's original intent was. But one of the beauties
Speaker 4: of mosses is their ability to remind us about being still,
Speaker 4: about staying in place. Mosses have a very high fidelity
Speaker 4: and loyalty to their home places, which is why they
Speaker 4: don't transplant. Well, they want to live here, not somewhere else.
Speaker 4: They're very specific and invested in their places, and I
Speaker 4: think that's one of the wonderful teachings that they have
Speaker 4: for us. So yeah, a rolling stone gathers no moss okay. Ps.
Speaker 3: Side note, I always thought that meant that you have
Speaker 3: to keep on your hustle or else you'll just become
Speaker 3: green and hairy. And yes, I looked it up and
Speaker 3: it was originally supposed to mean that a tree that's
Speaker 3: moved a bunch bears no fruit. Also side note, the
Speaker 3: rolling Stones just got that name when a journalist on
Speaker 3: the phone 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 aneologist, is what is the hardest
Speaker 3: part about your job or about being a biologist, or
Speaker 3: what's frustrating or even if it's petty or even if
Speaker 3: it's you know, deep or silly, what's one thing that
Speaker 3: is kind of sticks in your craw?
Speaker 4: Hmmm. I have never been asked that question, and I
Speaker 4: so love being a bryologist that I have a hard
Speaker 4: time thinking of that. I honestly, I can't think of
Speaker 4: anything in a way. I suppose the thing that frustrates
Speaker 4: me is that people overlook mosses. There are times in
Speaker 4: the plant ecology literature, when scientific literature, when they're describing
Speaker 4: a forested community, they'll have a category called moss.
Speaker 3: Like, really, that's all you got.
Speaker 4: That's a category kind of like tree, because mosses have
Speaker 4: so much ability in their specificity to tell us something
Speaker 4: about that place. Just to lump all these you know,
Speaker 4: seventeen thousand species of beings into a category called moss
Speaker 4: is frustrating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's so valid, and then this is going to
Speaker 3: be hard. But what is your favorite thing about moss?
Speaker 3: What is the thing that just gives you the butterflies
Speaker 3: of the most or it just makes your heart swell.
Speaker 4: Straight up? Their beauty. I've been looking at mosses for
Speaker 4: oh man, half a century, and it still gives me
Speaker 4: a thrill when I put my lens on them and think,
Speaker 4: oh my gosh, this just perfection in miniature. They're beautiful,
Speaker 4: intimacy with water, their quiet kind of elegance. I 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. So do you have one, Ellie? Not yet, No,
Speaker 3: But I was like I was thinking about it and
Speaker 3: just looking at the rocks in the yard and thinking,
Speaker 3: oh gosh, I want to see so much. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that's next on my list. I yeah, Oh
Speaker 3: do it, absolutely, I can't. It's just this idea that
Speaker 3: there's this magical world that's right underneath you, that you
Speaker 3: know that if you just kind of open your eyes
Speaker 3: and get still enough to look I love it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Thank you so so much for talking to me and
Speaker 3: doing this. And you've just been You've been on my
Speaker 3: list as someone I've wanted to talk to you for
Speaker 3: so long, and it it just Yeah, it feels surreal
Speaker 3: hearing your voice talk to me, the person who reads
Speaker 3: you to sleep at night. I know it's weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've been with.
Speaker 3: Me on hikes and all kinds of things. You've done
Speaker 3: this sesss with me. To have an interaction interaction is
Speaker 3: really surreal. But thank you so so much for doing this.
Speaker 3: So ask awesome bryologists, great questions, and just know that
Speaker 3: there's a universe around you that is unfathomably large and
Speaker 3: it keeps expanding. And then there's also worlds in miniature
Speaker 3: underfoot just living out love and drama. Now, Doctor Robin
Speaker 3: Kimmero's books once again are Gathering Moss, a natural and
Speaker 3: cultural history of mosses and Braiding Sweet Grass, Indigenous Wisdom,
Speaker 3: scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. 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. There will be links to those in
Speaker 3: the show notes, as well as a link to donate
Speaker 3: to the Center for Native Peoples in the Environment, should
Speaker 3: you choose. You can follow Ologies at Ologies on Twitter
Speaker 3: and Instagram. I'm on both as Ali Ward with one.
Speaker 3: Now come be friends. You can join the Ologies podcast
Speaker 3: Facebook group. It's full of fourteen thousand very loving, accepting
Speaker 3: humans and that's admined by the wonderful Ernie Michelle Campbell Talbert,
Speaker 3: my friend since we were four. You can also wear
Speaker 3: Ologies merch by going to Ologiesmarch dot com. Thank you
Speaker 3: to Shannon Feltus and Bonnie Dutch. They host a very
Speaker 3: charming comedy podcast called You Are That and they help
Speaker 3: with merch which is agonizingly delayed at the printers warehouse
Speaker 3: due to the pandemic. So thank you for your patients.
Speaker 3: Thank you Emily White for cranking out transcripts with all
Speaker 3: the folks in the Ologies transcriber group.
Speaker 4: I love you all.
Speaker 3: Caleb Patten bleeps the episode so they're safe for kiddos.
Speaker 3: Those and transcripts are up for free at Alleyward dot
Speaker 3: com slash ologies, dash extras. There's a link to that
Speaker 3: in the show notes. Thank you to everyone on Patreon
Speaker 3: for helping me pay these amazing people to help out. Also,
Speaker 3: Noel Dilworth helps with at the scheduling. She's an angel
Speaker 3: on Earth. Kelly Dwyer updates the website at Alleyward dot com.
Speaker 3: And Jared Sleeper does the first pass edits and cuts
Speaker 3: out all my ms and other nonsense, and the wonderful
Speaker 3: Stephen Ray Morris stitches all the pieces together to make
Speaker 3: the moss quilt you here today. Nick Thorburn of the
Speaker 3: band Islands wrote and performed the theme music, which I
Speaker 3: think we should get on the iTunes store. What do
Speaker 3: you say? Should we do it?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 3: Now, if you stick around to the end of the episode,
Speaker 3: you know I tell you a secret. And this week's
Speaker 3: secret is that sometimes when I eat a carrot, I
Speaker 3: eat like all the way up to the butt of it,
Speaker 3: you know, sometimes I'll even munch the butt a little bit.
Speaker 3: And I was telling my friend Mike this once and
Speaker 3: he's like, you can do that. I'm like, I think,
Speaker 3: And anyway, he ate the whole carrot butt and then
Speaker 3: he got terrible food poisoning, and now whenever I eat
Speaker 3: a carry it up to the butt, I think, oh man,
Speaker 3: poor Micah, I probably shouldn't eat the top of the carrot. Sorry, Micah, yikes. Anyway,
Speaker 3: I guess at some point you could just got to
Speaker 3: stop eating the karten and get another karrot. Please, nobody
Speaker 3: do this and get food poisoning. Okay, thank you for
Speaker 3: listening to this public service announcement. So the second secret
Speaker 3: is that it's twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: I was going to cut that secret out and replace
Speaker 3: it with a new one, but it's just a good secret.
Speaker 3: It's a quality secret that one stays. So now I
Speaker 3: guess the third secret is that if you've been listening
Speaker 3: to twenty twenty two episodes, you may know that your
Speaker 3: beloved grandpad my dad, passed away in July and it
Speaker 3: has been tough. But the good news is that I
Speaker 3: have dreams about him a lot, and I kind of
Speaker 3: wake up feeling like we've gotten to hang out, and
Speaker 3: that's really nice. So I thought i'd tell you, all right, boyebye.
Speaker 1: I'm experienced at foraging. I used to find edible mushrooms
Speaker 1: on my bath mat.
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