the.com/moss
the patient empire that conquers stone without roots, leaves, or hurry
means A small, soft, non-flowering plant that grows in dense green carpets on damp ground, rocks, and tree bark.
from From Old English 'mos,' meaning bog or marsh as much as the plant itself — the early sense was the wet ground where the stuff thrived, not just the green velvet on top. It has deep Germanic roots, a cousin of Old Norse 'mosi' and German 'Moos,' and is possibly related distantly to Latin 'muscus' (moss). The blurring of 'wet place' and 'plant of the wet place' lingers in English place-names ending in -moss, marking old peat bogs across the north.
- no roots
- absorbs water through its entire body, not roots
- survival king
- some species revive after decades fully dried out
- ancient pioneer
- among first plants to leave water 450 million years ago
- compass myth
- doesn't reliably grow only on north sides
- war medicine
- sphagnum dressed wounds in World War I
sphagnum moss — covers 3% of earth's surface but stores twice as much carbon as all forests combined
moss in antarctica — only 2 species of vascular plants exist there, but moss thrives across the continent