“Who is going to want to read a book about mosses?” says the American botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer (New York, 1953), who asked herself when she began to write about these small plants to which so little attention is paid that they are not even usually have common names.
However, this scientist of indigenous descent, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, set out to show how incredible this world in miniature can be, a natural kingdom that, according to her, from the perspective of a six-foot human looks so far away. like the earth's surface from an airplane flying at 10,000 meters.
As she tells it in an online interview, this is how
Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses
was born , a curious work now translated into Spanish with the title
Reserva de mosgo
(Ed. Captain Swing).
Ask.
How is moss like a rainforest?
Answer.
Mosses are made up of small shoots that are like miniature trees, so they resemble small-scale forests.
Furthermore, in mosses there is a network of life as complex as that of a tropical jungle.
Inside there is a lot of humidity, many small creatures, and biochemical processes of nutrient recycling and climate regulation take place.
Q.
How much biodiversity is there in a single gram of forest floor moss?
A.
Mosses are sometimes spoken of as forest coral reefs.
A small handful of moss is full of biodiversity: mites, tardigrades, nematodes and all kinds of small invertebrates that live there.
And just like in a forest, there are some specimens that graze, others are predators, parasites also live.
In moss there are very complex food webs and ecological interactions.
It's a small miniature world.
Q.
In this miniature world we are not looking for tigers or gorillas but rather small tardigrades.
It is not like this?
A.
I don't specifically look for tardigrades, but I love it when I find them.
These little creatures are very special because most live only in mosses and because they have a remarkable ability to tolerate dryness.
When the moss is wet, these tardigrades move like little bears, they are also called water bears.
But if the mosses dry out, they also dry out.
They enter a state called “tun” and simply wait.
Until their environment becomes wet again and then they expand to become living, moving water bears again.
They are truly extraordinary organisms due to their ability to desiccate without dying.
Q.
Is the moss proof that being small is not a failure?
A.
We often think that success is about being big, powerful and dominant.
Mosses are neither of these things, but they have outlived almost every being that ever lived on Earth.
In fact, they look a lot like they did 400 million years ago.
Their success is due precisely to the fact that they are small, they fit into small micro-niches.
But also because they take very little from the environment and give back a lot.
They promote the life of other beings, build biodiversity, build soil.
Q.
Why do you say that learning to see moss is more like listening than looking?
A.
It's about looking first, but with the kind of intensity that we also use when we hear a very small sound.
Every day we pass by mosses without seeing them, what we have to do is stop, kneel and look.
It is useful to have a magnifying glass, but it is not essential either.
They are so amazing, there are tens of thousands of types of mosses and each one of them is beautiful, unique.
All you have to do is look, but I also compare it to listening because to see the mosses you have to be quiet, still and slow down.
Q.
How does being part of the Potawatomi Nation change your scientific view of plants?
A.
In our Potawatomi worldview we understand that all beings, whether mosses, birds, trees or people, are intrinsically valuable.
We think of plants as our relatives, our family, and indeed teachers.
This completely changes my relationship with mosses as a scientist, because I think of them not so much as an object, but as a subject made up of wise beings that could tell me something about the world.
Q.
Some mosses are in danger due to abusive extraction.
Instead, the Potawatomi ask the plants for permission before collecting them.
A.
That's right.
The idea of asking permission is tied to the indigenous concept of honorable harvest and the fact that the world does not belong to us.
It is not our property.
Collecting these plants by simply going into the forest and pulling them up is very disrespectful when you think of those mosses as other people, not human people, moss people, with their own lives and rights.
Therefore, we ask permission and judge whether it is okay or not to take them.
Q.
What should humans learn from moss?
A.
A lot.
First, humility.
Not to think that we are in charge of the world, that humans are owners of the universe.
Mosses are very successful without exerting all that control and domination over the living world.
They also teach us to live within our means.
Human beings constantly try to change the environment to suit our purposes, so that we can have more and more things.
But mosses show us a simple and beautiful life in reciprocity with the earth.
They multiply life around them.
We humans could learn from the humility of mosses.
You can follow
Climate and Environment
on
and
X
, or sign up here to receive
our weekly newsletter
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I am already a subscriber
_