We Need to Talk about Moss

We need to talk about moss.

We need to talk about all things green, everything that terraforms the planet, tames the rage of wind and water, gathers carbon out of air and feeds the biosphere. We have not heard enough about trees and grasslands yet, nor river-reeds and seaweeds. Let’s not stop talking forest and food-chain, farming, foraging, flora and fauna. But let’s include the small and creeping things as well. Mosses.
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I want to know why there are chemical sprays to remove the moss from garden lawns, when everyone who has ever walked barefoot through their garden on a summer morning knows that a lawn needs moss to make it perfect. I want to understand why you would water-blast the greenness off your boundary-walls and driveway, when it’s not doing any harm and it looks so much prettier than naked brick and stone. I want to find out if there’s a cost-effective way to build a roof that won’t get damaged by slow-shifting clumps of moss—a roof that mosses could thicken and insulate like old mediaeval thatch, keeping your house cooler in summer and warmer the rest of the year. 

I’d like us to stand and stare at the slow advancing micro-spikes of moss along tree-trunks and fences. The way moss covers and swallows a fallen tree, harbouring moisture, speeding the return of deadwood into earth. Am I imagining this, or has moss quickened in the years when forests have burned elsewhere? Do mosses remember their vulcan day of creation, and will they know what to do at the end of another high-carbon age?
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I want you to feel the velvet texture on stone walls, to see the almost-glow of mosses in low-pitched autumn sunlight. The mini-foliates of moss are thin, so thin you’d think they could smell the warm damp carbons even as you breathe. So thin they dry and seem to die, roughening and dulling like old carpet. But like a miracle they rehydrate in rain, and soak up water to grow again, to thicken and soak up more. It’s time the botanists took the stuff seriously, worked out how much moss a metropolis must muster if the metropolis is to maintain the health of its breathing citizens. 

They have made a start. There are cities where polluted air has refused to respond to laws and regulations. Cities where humans have been forced to think again and again until someone thought of moss. Cities where tall irrigated towers of moss absorb carbon and pollutants now from the vehicles running below. Let’s keep thinking. Why build metal-and-concrete towers among plentiful towering buildings? Why not house your tiny green symbiots on roofs and walls already there? If you roofed half your city in moss, would it save you just a little in heating and cooling as well as swallowing your pollutants?
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And, while we’re at it, are there larger places that moss could help regreen? The oceanographers are learning new ways to re-seed bleached-out coral. Is there an easy way to kickstart the slow spread of lichens and mosses across ruined landscapes? Not deserts, perhaps, but quarries, post-industrial zones, or even burnt-out forest? Mosses and ferns once terraformed a planet far less hospitable than we know today. I think they would try to do it again, given time and opportunity. 

​It’s only talk, and talk is inexpensive. But we need to ask silly questions, share unlikely ideas, keep the discussion open, see where our children will take it. We need to talk about green things and greenness, greenery and moss.