Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

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The author truly did a wonderful job explaining the significance of her years of research and experience to a lay audience.

Intriguing and uplifting stories of the world's oldest plants, from the revered botanist and indigenous teacher Robin Wall KimmererMosses 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. 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. 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.

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 within the framework of indigenous ways of knowing. 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! This is a primary adaptation to their role as the first colonisers of the land,” she says. “There was no soil here then – nothing for roots to grab on to, and no way to conserve water – so this was an evolutionary imperative. It’s quite remarkable, though not all mosses have it. Others have evolved to live in continuously wet places.”

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. In these interwoven 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. 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.

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 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)Mosses are successful by any biological measure - they inhabit nearly every ecosystem in earth and number as many as 22,000 species." 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. 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. This was Robin Wall Kimmerer's first book. As noted in my review of "Braiding Sweetgrass", Dr. Kimmerer is a national treasure. Any woman who can write a book on moss that is, and isn't, about moss, can hold the attention of someone who isn't a fan of botany (I couldn't read Pollan's "Botany of Desire" either), and that prompts me to stop on the trail on discovering a patch of moss, just to touch it, has a rare writing gift indeed! I loved this book. The audiobook was extremely well-read - the pacing was spot on and the excitement of the narrator was conveyed perfectly!

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". Living 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 The engine of her next book will be “ecological compassion” for plants. She would like people to come to understand them as sovereign beings in their own right, if not people. “The research in plant intelligence that is being done is already revolutionising science,” she says, “so my next project is designed to elicit in the reader a sense of compassion and justice for them. I would like people to recognise their culture. Take off your anthropocentric lenses, and you will see that they have very rich cultural lives.”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 Robin Wall Kimmerer is not at all boring to read. These essays on mosses and life are to be read slowly, and savored, or not at all... though, honestly, I find it hard to imagine racing through them. Her style, while not verbose, simply leaves too much in the mind with every paragraph. 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 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. 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].”