Mosses are the residual scum, the thread memory rising from the moment their algal ancestors rose from the shores of a receding primordial ocean. Bryophytes, their scientific name, means what grows, multiplies and proliferates; from the Greek brúon, “moss”, and the verb brúo (as in embryo), to grow in abundance, to ferment, and phutón, “plant, vegetal” from phyein, to grow, probably from the proto Indo-European root-stem *bheue, “to be, to exist, to grow”. Their etymology is redundant, witness to their resoluteness, their determination to be of this world, to belong here, wherever here is: on rocks and walls, bogs and wood, parking lots and mine sites, acid or alkaline soils, wherever.
They exist at a scale we, humans, can barely comprehend, in space and time. They are usually somewhat invisible even when they lay right under our nose, or we perceive them as a carpet, a mattress, a cushion; they exist in numbers only. Who has ever considered an individual moss? They are slow, so slow that we often take them for dead. They live in deep time, geological time, the time of eras and eons. They are the first terrestrial descent of the perpetrators of the great oxidation, mighty and terraforming. Since then, they inhabit the cracks and breaches of Earth, and are known to grow where nothing else can. They are often the first to revive on burnt land, they expand even in Winter and don’t fear any frost. They suffer no predators nor diseases, or so little. Their substrate is for support only, they do not really need a soil—they are even known for creating it. They proliferate in any dimensions and make light of gravity—well they do not weight anything, and live out of water and fresh air, as the song goes.
Bipolar mosses
Bipolar bryophytes are mosses showing a disjunct distribution on Earth: they grow in high-latitudinal areas of both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, with or without small intermediate populations at higher elevations in the tropics. They are quite common; bryologists estimate that 45% of all mosses growing in the Antarctic are bipolar. They cannot really explain why some of these mosses are characterized by these extreme disjunct distributions. It has not escaped us, also, that “bipolar” is the adjective of choice for our time—who isn’t, these days, always on the wrong side of the fence, alternatively slightly over-enthused, slightly too depressed? They are nothing, and yet, “bipolar”. Borderline bipolar, one of the signatures of our time.
Bioindicators
We have conducted a literature review on bryophytes (specifically bipolar bryophytes) and their relation to climate change.
You can see this detailed account here.
Moss Identification
Before going to Kilpisjärvi, Finland, we were able to determine with surprising precision which bipolar species we were going to find on or around the biological base. This allowed us to select six potential species of bryophytes that we were interested in finding. With the help of a bryologist-in-training and the finnish expert Risto Virtanen, we learned how to recognize them in the field, how to spot their distinctive features and habitats, in order to decide where we were going to install our Cybryonts.
Studied mosses:
- Polytrichum Strictum
- Polytrichum Juniperinum
- Cinclidium Stygium
- Plagomnium Elipticum
- Distichium capillaceum
- Tortella Tortuosa
