Thursday, July 4, 2024
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Small and almost invisible to the untrained eye, it creeps into the cracks of sidewalks or onto fallen trees in the woods. It plays a crucial role in the survival of ecosystems
Source: Colpisa
If you look carefully at the world around us and pay attention to everything that makes it up, an often invisible element will begin to make its presence felt. It's moss, whose life is all but a secret to the average person. We don't see it, we don't notice it, and we don't pause to consider the crucial role it plays in making Nature work.
As bryologist Robin Wall Kimmerer notes in Gathering Moss, recently published by Captain Swing, "Mosses are so unfamiliar to the general public that only a few have common names.” The discreet life they live may indeed be related to their small size. "Plants always tend to go unnoticed compared to animals,” reflects Rafael Medina at the other end of the line, a professor at the Complutense University of Madrid and secretary general of the Spanish Bryological Society.
In fact, as Medina points out, when we talk about moss in the singular, we’re forgetting that there are actually many mosses. "There are many different kinds. It would be like calling all plants trees," he points out. There are about 1,100 species of bryophytes (mosses and related plants) in the Iberian Peninsula alone. "I like to compare them to the more than 6,000 vascular plants. That's a significant portion," he points out.
Unknown, but not simple
It's clear that this 'secret' life for a large part of the population doesn't mean they're simple. Quite the opposite. "Mosses aren’t like the background music in buildings, but the intertwined threads of a Beethoven quartet," writes Wall Kimmerer. "Understanding mosses enriches our understanding of the world," she contends.
To begin with, they’ve been on the planet for a very long time. "A true moss, or bryophyte, is the most primitive of land plants," states the American expert. Mosses were the "pioneer" plants, those that left the water to become land plants.
Moreover, they play a crucial role in the functioning of ecosystems. When we imagine a forest, we fill it with trees, but also with moss. "The beauty of the mosses in these forests is not only visual. They are essential to their functioning," states Wall Kimmerer in Gathering Moss. "Miguel Delibes de Castro likened the forest to a washing machine, full of nuts and bolts," says Medina. One nut or bolt coming loose or getting lost may not be a problem, but if many of them start to fail, the washing machine will stop working. Moss is one of those important nuts and bolts. "We need to preserve that diversity so that everything can work," the specialist points out.
They’re important for seeds, supporting their growth and serving as a seed bank. But something else they do is attract life. Observing mosses, as Wall Kimmerer states in her book, reveals their complexity and how they affect the world around them. Mosses, Medina adds, buffer the inflow and outflow of water or trap it from the atmosphere (as in laurisilva forests). They provide a habitat for many small animals and protect the soil from erosion. "In our country, which is quite arid, mosses protect the soil in steppe areas," he explains.
Similarly, moss has traditional uses that have been forgotten. Among Native American tribes, for example, mosses were used as diapers or menstrual pads, although this knowledge has been somewhat lost, as the American expert documents. Researchers writing ethnographic texts in the 19th century often overlooked this as insignificant.
Valuable information
Mosses also live in our cities today, and they convey particularly valuable information. As Robin Wall Kimmerer points out, they’re like the canary in the coal mine. The disappearance of urban mosses is a sign of very poor air quality: they’re nowhere to be found because the level of pollution is too high. "We can gauge the extent of air pollution thanks to the sensitivity of mosses," she writes. "Because they act as an indicator, they’re like one of the first parts of the washing machine," Medina summarizes, again using his effective metaphor. That’s why we should "pay more attention" to them.
Moreover, mosses play a fundamental role in the context of the current climate emergency. Medina emphasizes the importance of peat moss when it comes to carbon. We often think of leafy trees and large forests when we talk about the planet's green lungs that clean the atmosphere. Mosses are left out of that equation. Peat mosses, found in Siberia, northern Europe, and parts of Canada, are "extremely important carbon reservoirs."
This species is responsible for cleaning up these emissions. Losing it would be a tragedy, and not just because it would stop "sucking up" carbon. One of the dangers is that the death of this moss species could release what it has accumulated over centuries into the atmosphere. "It would be catastrophic," Medina states. That's why "we have to take care of it," he stresses, and that requires a global effort.
We must prevent high temperatures that would melt the Arctic and protect Arctic ecosystems from damage. We should also avoid using peat moss for things where it can easily be replaced. For example, the expert points out that many orchids are potted with peat moss, which is also used in gardening. We should stop doing this. Medina also reminds us that collecting moss from nature—regardless of the species—is illegal in Spain.
Protecting the moss we have here is also important. There are unique species that, if they were to disappear from Spanish soil, would be gone forever. Medina encourages people to consult the Atlas and Red Book of Threatened Bryophytes of Spain to learn more about endangered mosses. Compared to the "charismatic species" of animals that we all care about—and should continue to do so, of course—education would help people understand the importance of protecting mosses and their ecosystems. We all understand how terrible it would be to tear down the Cathedral of Santiago to build a parking lot, Medina poses as an example. Now we need to understand that the same is true of nature.
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