Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

Early in her career, Kimmer was invited to consult on the re-creation of an Appalachian habitat within a private garden. When she arrived at the rural address she had been given, she was startled by its apparently advanced security. A large gate slid aside to admit her car onto the property. She was astonished to see, up ahead of her on the private drive, a truck hauling a massive oak of a size she would have said impossible to transport or transplant. Following the truck slowed her progress, and the worker who greeted her at the worksite—which was a hive of activity atop freshly-scraped land—scolded her for her tardiness. The owner, he told her, was very strict about consultants’ time.

A young horticulturist named Matt greeted her warmly, explaining that the owner was particularly fond of mosses and that his intention was to use them to lend a patina of age to his landscaping and home. The owner’s house was surrounded by enormous trees; Matt explained that, since it was impossible to buy trees of this size, the owner simply bought the land on which large trees stood and then had them dug up and transplanted here. Inside the house. Matt showed her the owner’s collection of African art. To Kimmerer, it felt out of place and artificial: “In a display case,” she remarks, “a thing becomes only a facsimile of itself” (128).

Matt showed her into the house’s courtyard garden. Kimmerer noted that, while beautiful, the garden was a transparent facsimile of nature, containing placements that would never occur in nature. She thought this disrespectful, reducing the mosses to art materials. Matt admitted that many of the mosses were simply superglued in place. Back outside, he explained that the owner disliked the raw rock wall exposed by the construction of his new golf course; he wanted Kimmerer to explain how to cover the rock with moss so that it looked “Like an old English course” (130). Kimmerer tried to explain that mosses take a long time to grow. Getting them established on a rock wall is very tricky, and scientists still do not know why.

Kimmerer wonders if mosses suffer from homesickness when they are transplanted. “Mosses have an intense bond to their places that few contemporary humans can understand,” she comments (131). When Matt pressed her for a solution, Kimmerer acknowledged that seeding the rocks with spores might be possible. She explained to him the technique some gardeners use for seeding rocks: they blend up buttermilk with mosses found growing in the same conditions in which they will eventually be growing in the garden. This is then pasted over the garden rocks. If successful, within a couple of years the rocks will support mature moss colonies. Matt led her to a forested area nearby to point out the beautiful mosses growing naturally on a rock face there, wanting to know if these types of mosses would be suitable. Before Kimmerer left, she tried to get information from Matt about who the owner actually was, but he would not say.

A year later, Kimmerer was invited back to see the progress at the site. She was initially astonished: moss seemed to be growing in lush profusion everywhere the owner had wanted it. Later, however, she realized that the owner was having natural, moss-covered rock faces blasted in order to create moss-covered rocks and boulders for his grounds. Many mosses were dying in the process. Very distressed, Kimmerer wondered about “what it means to own a thing, especially a wild and living being” (139). She sees the human desire to own things as purposeless, an exercise in domination that turns living things into objects. She calls ownership and love mutually exclusive.

Kimmerer describes Oregon’s patchwork of forest types, the result of logging and regrowth over time. She says that, like many Indigenous people, when she says her prayers of thanks each morning, she remembers to thank each species whose life is intertwined with her own. She wonders, though, whether the land has any reason to be thankful to humans in return. She guesses that, if the forest prays, it offers thanks to mosses.

Mosses are integral to the functioning of the Oregon rain forest. When it rains, the structure of tree branches and leaf stems guides the rainfall into rivulets that eventually run down the trunk of the tree, washing it and sending debris—dust, insect droppings, lichens, and so on—down to the soil, where it enriches the soil and feeds the tree’s roots. Moss growing on trees absorbs much of this flow of water, slowly releasing moisture back to the forest during drier weather. The mosses that grow in the Oregon rainforest are rich in pectin, allowing them to absorb atmospheric moisture, as well. When they become saturated with this moisture, they drip water onto the forest floor. Their ability to retain and gradually release water keeps moisture levels in the forest steady, providing habitat for moisture-dependent creatures like slugs and salamanders. It also prevents the rapid movement of large quantities of water that causes runoff and impoverishes the forest’s soil. Mosses provide a habitat for many insects and cushion nest-bottoms for many species of birds. They are a moist, sheltered rooting substrate for ferns and tree seedlings. Their moisture allows fungi to thrive; this is essential, because forest fungi break down dead matter, increasing soil nutrients, and many fungi have mutualistic relationships with living trees that allow nutrients to cycle efficiently between organisms.

Disturbed by her own relationship with the forest products that result from cutting down trees, Kimmerer decided at one point to go visit a clear cut to learn more about the process. She and her friend Jeff went together; at the last minute, Kimmerer almost insisted on turning back, because her first sight of the “violence around every turn” made her nauseous and anxious (144). She explains that the reforestation efforts that generally follow clearcutting can replant trees, but they do little to help mosses and other organisms get re-established in the forest. Scientists have studied this problem and recommended better practices—leaving a few old moss-covered trees as sources for new colonies of moss, for example. At the clearcut site, Kimmerer walked over to one such tree, now standing alone in a field of stumps. She saw that being suddenly exposed to much more wind and sun than usual was drying the mosses. Many would not recover. To Kimmerer, this is an example of modern humans’ failure to live in reciprocity with the land, because practices like clearcutting benefit only one species—humans—at the expense of many more.

Kimmerer shares a difficult experience cataloguing the aftermath of the illegal harvesting of mosses in an Oregon forest. She describes struggling through thorny bushes to reach the site and her feelings of devastation when she saw how the land and trees had been stripped of their thick carpets of decades-old moss colonies. She compares these mosses to old friends and to women facing sexual violence, and calls them “hostages” as she depicts them being carried away by the moss pickers (152). Kimmerer was so upset during her observations of the denuded forest because she knew the area might not ever fully recover. She also mourned the loss of life that picking the moss created: not only would the mosses die, but the thousands of tiny creatures that called the moss home would die, too.

Harvested mosses are destined to be sold as a dried decoration for things like flower baskets and artificial plants. Some will be glued to fabric sheets and sprayed with dyes and fire retardant in order to create “Designer Moss Sheets” (153). Applications such as these have become very popular, and since 1990, commercial moss harvesters—some legal, many illegal—have had a dramatic impact on Oregon’s forests.

Kimmerer’s research shows that recovery in areas stripped of mosses can take decades. The usual process of colonization is for species that prefer to colonize young trees to take hold where tiny scars on twigs and branches create a rough surface for the mosses to cling to. After these colonies are well-established, different moss species colonize them, in turn. Once trees are already mature, it is difficult—sometimes impossible—for mosses to colonize them. Because moss harvesting is not sustainable and has a domino impact on the surrounding ecosystem, Kimmerer concludes that “The time to be a bystander has passed” (155).

Each summer for many years, Kimmerer and her two daughters would lock up their comfortable house and travel into the Adirondacks, eventually crossing Cranberry Lake by boat to the shore that houses the biological station. They would spend the summer in a small, simple cabin that Kimmerer felt more at home in than in her primary home. She felt that, at the cabin, she had everything she really needed, and she always made it a rule to bring along as few possessions as possible. In the evenings, when she finished her work for the day, she and her daughters would explore by the lake.

In a tiny cave along the shore, Kimmerer discovered a colony of Schistostega pennata, or “Goblins’ Gold.” Schistostega is an extremely simple moss, adapted to the dim cave light with translucent green filaments in place of shoots and leaves. Each filament is a line of single cells, with each cell angled differently. The angling allows the moss to reflect the scarce light from many directions and focus it onto its chloroplasts for photosynthesis. This structure also causes the mat of filaments to shimmer as light is reflected from its many angled surfaces. Kimmerer compares this turning of sunlight into sugar to “spinning straw into gold” (159). She credits her relationship with Schistostega for teaching her the value of having only what is truly needed.

In this cave, Kimmerer and her daughters would wait as the sun went down. When it reached a point just above the horizon, its angle would be perfect for sending a beam of light straight into the small cave, and the Schistostega would erupt into a dazzling, glittery display. This nightly burst of light was enough for the moss to eventually form reproductive structures and spread from cave to cave.

Kimmerer comments that this reproduction and spread are beneficial, because “caves don’t live forever” (160). She remarks that her daughters eventually grew up and found other things to do besides wander the shore with their mother. Kimmerer herself visited the cave less and less often. One year, the year she finally brought some curtains to hang in the cabin window, the Schistostega moss disappeared when its cave collapsed. She recalled Shenandoah’s lesson about plants coming when they are needed and leaving when they are no longer appreciated and respected. Kimmerer concluded that bringing curtains to shut out the light and air was disrespectful, evidence that she was getting too attached to things and neglecting the natural world. She burned the curtains in the woodstove. That night, she gazed through the now-curtainless window into the dark sky, thinking about what a precious and ephemeral gift life really is and how, like Schistostega, one should reciprocate the gift by glittering in return.