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Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

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Moss isn't just fascinating for how it lives, spreads, and is used even today, but it becomes a metaphor for life and its struggle for survival. By seeing moss in a new way, we see the challenges to living in a new way too. While the spiritual dimension in this book isn't as immersive as her second book, we follow her experiences as a wife, mother, and scientist in ways that she doesn't reveal in "Braiding Sweetgrass". Kimmerer's linked essays weave personal histories with her research and fieldwork in bryology and forest ecology, and she relates the lives of these small plants into the larger sphere of forests, speaking to the important role they play in temperature regulation, air flow, soil nutrients, etc.

Mosses are successful by any biological measure - they inhabit nearly every ecosystem in earth and number as many as 22,000 species." In one section the author discusses how two different mosses can inhabit the same log. Ecological theory predicts that coexistence is possible only when the two species diverge from one another in some essential way. This theory made me think of men and women. Maybe the only way that we can coexist is because of our differences, which there are many! But in the case of mosses, she is referring to their reproductive strategy. One moss only grows on top of logs she discovered, because this is a pathway for chipmunks who disturb the area and spread the tiny moss propagules along the way. There are always many parts to a puzzle and how curious that moss and chipmunks are linked together! Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-03-17 21:10:21 Bookplateleaf 0004 Boxid IA40396517 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Lccn 2002151221 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.15 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-1200092 Openlibrary_editionLiving at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. Gathering moss is a mix of science and personal reflection that invites readers to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses. In this series of linked personal essays, Robin Kimmerer leads general readers and scientists alike to an understanding of how mosses live and how their lives are intertwined with the lives of countless other beings. Kimmerer explains the biology of mosses clearly and artfully, while at the same time reflecting on what these fascinating organisms have to teach us. Drawing on her experiences as a scientist, a mother, and a Native American, Kimmerer explains the stories of mosses in scientific terms as well as in the framework of indigenous ways of knowing. In her book, the natural history and cultural relationships of mosses become a powerful metaphor for ways of living in the world There's some genuinely great stuff in here about Kimmerer's experience and life long study of moss - sections on tardigrades (squee!), sorrow over illegal moss harvesting and the slow pace of moss regeneration, a moss that grows almost entirely in the dark, and even some excellent dinner conversation material ("The indigestible fiber of mosses has been reported from a surprising location - the anal plug of hibernating bears"). But I'm really not sure whom this book is intended for, as it seems a bit too science-y for those who are casually interested in mosses, and yet too memoir-y for scientists. Gathering Moss is a blend of science and poetry, just the right kind of book I love. I've learned quite a few things about moss. What is moss? Can you distinguish moss from lichen? The reproduction strategy of moss. Ancient moss protection is inadequate in US. The rootless moss can be more difficult to transplant than trees.

The audiobook was extremely well-read - the pacing was spot on and the excitement of the narrator was conveyed perfectly! Do plants have rights? Should they be given more protection under the law? She smiles. “My greatest hope for my book is that it will make perfect sense of their rights. Such rights are not for us to bestow. I believe that they have their own inherent rights.” Margot Robbie stars as the eponymous fashion doll in this live-action adventure directed by Greta... Shout out to this fabulous book, it made a guest appearance in my latest YouTube Video (all about making fun nature things out of felt).Mosses, though... mosses are everywhere. That's how I settled on this title. Even my untrained eye notices moss while running errands on foot, or walking to the dedicated Nature area of town. Mosses inhabit this sphere of common yet unnoticed living things. Silent observers. There's wisdom and experience here, for a plant that has witnessed millenia of life. Kimmerer taps into this deep wisdom, sharing stories of her own life as a mother, as university professor, as a Potawatomi native woman. Does she have a favourite moss? Is it, perhaps, Schistostega pennata, otherwise known as goblin’s gold, a moss she describes in her book as “a paragon of minimalism” for its ability to live in caves with little natural light? (It makes use, not of leaves, but of a fragile mat of filaments known as the protonema, and seems almost to shimmer in the gloom.) Kimmerer laughs. “That’s a hard one,” she says. “But I think it would be Tetraphis pellucida, a moss that hedges its bets reproductively [growing almost exclusively on rotten stumps and logs, it has uniquely specialised means of both sexual and asexual reproduction]. I love them. Their architecture is so beautiful.” A book about moss? Really? I hated botany in college so while this was highly recommended by a friend (who happens to be a botanist who studies ...wait for it ... sedges!), I just wasn't sure this was for me. I added it to my TBR list and spent more than a year with it there. I did attempt it once, but didn't get far and the library reclaimed it. Drawing on her diverse experiences as a scientist, mother, teacher, and writer of Native American heritage, Kimmerer explains the stories of mosses in scientific terms as well as in the framework of indigenous ways of knowing. In her book, the natural history and cultural relationships of mosses become a powerful metaphor for ways of living in the world.

Can mosses help us to read the state of the planet? “We don’t know if they can in macro ways,” Kimmerer tells me (she’s speaking to me on Zoom from upstate New York). “But in small ways, yes. They are great indicators of air quality, and of heavy metals in the environment; because they have no epidermis, they’re intimate with the world. They’re storytellers. If I see a certain kind of moss, I’ll think, Oh, I know you… you wouldn’t be here unless there was limestone nearby. There are mosses that tell the story of land disturbance, and there are mosses that only come in after fires, and they’re habitats, too, for tardigrades and rotifers [minute aquatic animals], for algae, and all sorts of other things. They are the coral reef of the forest, a microbiome in which the species of the bacteria that live in the angles of their leaves are different, say, to those on their rhizoids [the filaments found on their thallus, or plant body].” The particular species mentioned by Kimmerer may or may not be present in our Special Administrative Region, I honestly have no idea... but the patterns certainly are. Mosses are the final frontier for most botanists. We start with the easy stuff - trees, shrubs, and flowers - and then level up into grasses, sedges, and rushes. But mosses are uniquely daunting, as there are really no beginner books and even basic taxonomy requires a microscope.Robin Kimmerer tells us the almost impossible, that most mosses are immune to death by drying. For them, desiccation is simply a temporary interruption in life. Mosses may lose up to 98 percent of their moisture, and still survive to restore themselves when water is replenished. It's like a plant with a little bit of magic. And turns out to be very useful. Native Americans used mosses for diapers and sanitary napkins. Magic diapers! Remember that, moms, if you find yourselves out in the woods in a pinch. Kimmerer has given me new eyes to see. I don't remember, and maybe never will memorize, the Latinate names. She gave me permission to be okay with eschewing arbitrary data in favor of learning to see life itself.

The language used in the book was very poetic and made the experience of listening to it into something extraordinary. It made my mind completely tuned into the stories and made me forget about the daily hardships. Beneath your feet, barely visible to the eye, is another world: a rainforest in miniature ... Read Kimmerer's book and you're unlikely ever again to waste precious gardening time scraping moss from paving stones. Rachel Cooke, Observer Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. Gathering Moss is a beautifully written mix of science and personal reflection that invites readers to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses.The thing is, I don't even have a baseline comprehension of nature. I can't say exactly when it all went off the rails... certainly, I spent most of my childhood out of doors, and have vivid memories of the small wood and creek just across the alley behind our house... but I never *learned* anything about what I was seeing. Despite weekly visits to the bookmobile, and almost-daily to the elementary school library, I rarely read scientific nonfiction because it was so BORING. I liked the parts about moss. I liked the parts where she describes experiments that she/ her graduate students have done/ are doing. I like her descriptions of the secret mossy meadow and the rainforest. Something was missing though. I think I wanted more actual mosses and less emotion/ spirituality. It's as surprising to me to write a five-star review on a book about mosses as it is to you to read it. (Well, for those of you who know me) In this series of linked personal essays, Robin Wall Kimmerer leads general readers and scientists alike to an understanding of how mosses live and how their lives are intertwined with the lives of countless other beings. Kimmerer explains the biology of mosses clearly and artfully, while at the same time reflecting on what these fascinating organisms have to teach us.

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