Moss: The 'remarkably resilient' nuisance which is actually quite wonderful

They are in fact quite wonderful things that pay back a little bit of close observation handsomely.

Indeed, we wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for their ability to geoengineer the environment.

Early in the existence of life on earth the only land was bare hard rock that had formed out of frozen larva. The evidence suggests that the first things that learned how to survive in such harsh environments bore a strong resemblance to modern lichens.

Which is pretty astonishing because these are not simple primitive creatures.

They are collaborative networks of at least two completely different species working together to survive and prosper. One does the job of stripping nutrients from bare rock or absorbing them from dust.

Another pulls off the clever trick of photosynthesis.

A fungus and an algae are not the most obvious of partners but nature throws up far more examples of the advantages of helping each other out than it does of being raw in tooth and claw.

If you doubt that then just contemplate the astonishing number of tiny species that you are carrying around with you as you read this. Because without them you wouldn’t survive.

Survival under pressure is what both lichens and mosses do very well. Neither get their moisture from pushing down roots into soil.

Instead, they use water when it is available and go into a form of statis when times get hard and there is nothing but harsh sun and baked surfaces.

That is how a plant as water loving as moss manages to survive even in harsh desert environments.

Hiding under a stone or even inside one and living off reflected light is a pretty effective strategy for a creature or a colony of collaborating creatures that knows how to absorb the least bit of moisture in a morning mist and retain it long enough to build some food.

Yet even in exposed on bare ice deserts at the poles mosses and lichens have proved tough enough customers to make a living in a landscape where almost nothing else is capable of doing so.

In more hospitable locations mosses form thick mats that can float on water. Which is just as well because more carbon is thought to have been locked up by sphagnum mosses than by trees.

The surface of a moss bog absorbs energy from sunlight whilst below it an acid bath develops that prevents anything from decaying.

The remains of once living matter build up steadily over thousands and then millions of years because nothing can eat them without oxygen.

Trying to pick a path across a network of bog, moss and water isn’t easy and anything that falls into it ends up perfectly preserved.

That’s why archaeologists periodically find bog creatures in an astonishing state of preservation, some of whom were purposefully put into the ground by ancient humans either in an act of punishment or of reverent respect.

People have known for a very long time about the power of bogs to preserve.

Unfortunately, it is only recently that we have also learned to recognise how important these environments are for our survival. In the aftermath of two world wars, that left Britain nervous about food security, grants were handed out to drain bogs and to deacidify them.

The consequence is some very deep scars on our moorlands where tons of carbon have washed down the rivers staining them brown and rushing floodwaters towards vulnerable downstream riverside locations in our towns and cities.

The grants and the conservation efforts now encourage the opposite as they are focused on maintaining or restoring upland peat bogs. Unfortunately, there is little that can be done to protect areas of Siberia and Canada where truly prodigious quantities of former bogs became frozen into permafrost during the ice ages.

As our planet warms these are now burping out giant gloops of methane and threatening to speed up the destabilisation of our climate that is now beginning to be evident as a consequence of a couple of centuries of humans burning other carbon stores.

The good news is that mosses and lichens are very resilient and will survive whatever we throw at them. They can reproduce clonally from the smallest fragments landing on a surface or sexually from spores that are astonishingly small.

It remains to be seen whether we humans are as good at survival or at preserving the soils that these fascinating creatures have played such an important role in building up.