🌈☔🌦️🍄🌱🍉

Dear moss lovers, would you like to share what in moss it is that brings you joy?

For me it is many things, its tiny magnificent beaty, its resilience and patience, how they are tiny little eco systems or forests, how they hold water. How they are ancient in their own way.

#Mosstodon #MossMonday #Moss #MacroMoss

Feb 24, 2025 at 5:33pmWeb
Show thread🌈☔🌦️🍄🌱🍉Feb 24, 2025
This patch btw, is in one of the busier streets of Amsterdam, close or in the center, loads of commuters every day. I wonder if any others stop to appreciate the beauty.
Show thread🌈☔🌦️🍄🌱🍉Feb 24, 2025

I mean, this is stuff this world is producing all the time, everywhere.

#Mosstodon #MossMonday #moss

Show threadmaxsolFeb 24, 2025
@wmd 
Show threadLoy HenaFeb 24, 2025

@wmd

this is soooo pretty

Show threadpedruskiFeb 24, 2025
@wmd interview with robin wall kimmerer: I can scarcely grasp the deep time of the cosmos, but a deep time that feels very relevant to me is the deep time of life on Earth. And within the plant kingdom, the beings that I have spent most of my career studying are the mosses, the most ancient. They were the first plants to come out on land. Every climate change that has ever happened on this planet, they have experienced. All the shifting of continents they have experienced, and they’re still here. Ninety-nine point nine percent of all beings, all species who ever evolved, are extinct. But as the world has changed, mosses have persisted. That’s deep time success. https://e360.yale.edu/features/robin-kimmerer-interview?s=09
Reciprocity: Rethinking Our Relationship with the Natural World

Robin Wall Kimmerer, the bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, recently published The Serviceberry, which explores the economies of nature. In an e360 interview, the Native American ecologist discusses reciprocity, gratitude, and aligning human law with ecological law.

Yale E360
Show threadJulian West🦞Feb 25, 2025
@wmd only a matter of time before someone figures out a way to sell it or burn it *sigh*
Show threadbomenFeb 25, 2025
@wmd mooi
Show threadBugspriet at EH23 Dect 3303Mar 1, 2025

@wmd Moos kühlt Mauern ab und ist Vorreiter für anderes

Moss is cooling down walls and is the base for other things alive

Show threadEveAustriaFeb 24, 2025

@wmd Moss is like a tiny wood with its own ecosystem, which has something magical I think.
I also love how moss smells :)

Plus: moss (and lichens) can play an important role in protecting our climate:
https://www.mpic.de/5104544/moose-und-flechten-bvoc
https://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/en/mosses-are-major-carbon-sinks/
https://newatlas.com/environment/huge-global-study-moss-vital-ecosystems-climate-change/
https://greencitysolutions.de/en/why-moss-must-go-into-the-city/

Unfortunately, climate change endangers moss too:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-worlds-oldest-moss-outlived-the-dinosaurs-but-it-may-not-survive-climate-change/

Hidden talents of mosses and lichens

Researchers discovered that in the rainforest, it is not only the tree leaves that emit biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) and thus have a major influence on the self-purifying power of the atmosphere. They found that mosses and lichens also emit large amounts of highly reactive and particle-forming sesquiterpenoids and thus have an impact on air quality, climate and ecosystem processes.

Show threadvxoFeb 24, 2025

@wmd That's one of the things that I love about it too - it's like a tiny understory forest, and it and various mycelia keep the forest floor safely recycling nutrients and water.

I may or may not have taken a dreamy adventure through it once while on shrooms lol

Show threadvxoFeb 24, 2025
@wmd if you pick up a rock that was set into the forest floor and moss, take a look at the layers with a strong light and magnifying glass, or camera with a strong macro lens. Right under the moss there's usually this soft gray layer of damp marl, then all sorts of fungi breaking down organic matter. It's beautiful.
Show threadSusanFeb 24, 2025
@wmd all of the things you mention about moss are a joy for me…I love the tactile aspects and how mosses are their own little worlds.
Show threadGrey PilgrimFeb 24, 2025
@wmd
I love all the different textures, the way it forms a tapestry on the forest floor, clinging to trees, covering tree stumps and dead branches lying around. What's not to love about moss.
Show threadfenekoFeb 24, 2025
@wmd for me it's the touch and smell. I was a scout growing up and I love sensory elements of a forest and especially the moss
Show threadKaren E. Lund 💙💛Feb 25, 2025

@wmd Aside from simply being beautiful (you either see it or you don't), moss rewards both distant and close viewing.

At a distance it is a soft, green, uniform cover. I have seen moss on rocks and logs make them look as if they were upholstered in the most plush green velvet.

Close up, moss is like a tiny garden or forest, each part a miniature plant.

And on a purely practical level, how else would we learn how to use the macro feature on our cameras? ;-)

#Mosstodon

Show threadHazel-Quercus 🟡⚪🟣⚫Feb 25, 2025
@wmd the way you can find them dormant in the driest of places and one rainfall and poof they are happy little fluffballs
Show threadGEDANKENTaenzeFeb 25, 2025
@wmd
Moss is a big cosmos in small things. I like its diversity and strength. Even when people put their feet on it, it continues to grow, it's like a sponge: absorbent and soft and it's a cleaner in nature.
#Mosstodon
Show threadJeroen Postma 🇪🇺Feb 25, 2025

@wmd mostly it's just the silly dead-pan humor that gets me. 😉

https://theitcrowd.fandom.com/wiki/Maurice_Moss

Maurice Moss

Maurice Moss, whose name is commonly misconceived to be "Maurice Mozz", (born c.1973) is a worker in the IT Department of Reynholm Industries. Of all the working staff in the IT Department, he is the most hard-working, the most experienced, and the most capable of doing his job well. He puts a lot of effort into his work, however he does not get the credit he deserves. Like most of the department, he is ignored and disrespected by the higher-ranking employees on the upper floors. Sometime during

The IT Crowd Wiki
Show threadundead enby of the apocalypseMar 1, 2025
@wmd those are some really cool sporophytes!!
Show threadundead enby of the apocalypseMar 1, 2025
@wmd fun fact: most of the moss, the gametophyte, is haploid (only has one copy of each chromosome). Those long skinny stalks are the sporophyte, which is diploid (has two copies of each chromosome, like we do). This is pretty unusual, and I think it’s pretty cool. The gametophyte is also called that because it produces gametes (sperms and eggs), which when fertilized produce a sporophyte. The sporophyte is called that because it produces spores, which after being spread produce more gametophytes.
Show threadundead enby of the apocalypseMar 1, 2025
@wmd it basically works like that for plants in general, but for most land plants the sporophyte, not the gametophyte is the vast majority of what we see of the plant, and the gametophyte is tiny and reduced to its bare essentials (and spores don’t usually really get spread as the gametophyte grows directly on the sporophyte… except for ferns, ferns do have a tiny gametophyte that grows on the ground, though most of what we see of ferns is the sporophyte). Mosses are kind of an outlier and I think that’s pretty fascinating.
Show threadIrenes (many)Mar 1, 2025
@wmd it's all of that for sure, and we love seeing such complexity at such a small scale, and being on an even footing with it makes us feel small and humble, in a pleasant way
Show threadnetop://ウィビMar 9, 2025

@wmd I like that moss looks like a whole 'nother world, and it reminds me of all the fantasy woodland stories I read as a kid. Narnia and Artemis Fowl come to mind…what would it be like to shrink myself and galavant all day with tiny forest friends?

Moss reminds me of simpler times and the endless bounds of child imagination. Current me, married with two kids in a hella expensive state with great schools and resources makes me think who the hell is keeping the moss fresh? Is there a union? 🫨

Show threadmk30Mar 12, 2025
@wmd too many things to list, but I like how they create cool, wet ecosystems underneath themselves that are good environments for other plant roots and some seeds. I like that they look like little forests. I like that they are soft. I like how they can come back from epic dryness just with a good rain. I like that you can move a moss mat and it'll keep growing in the new location. I like that they grow slowly, but also, next thing you know, an area that was bare is now covered in moss.