Gathering Moss

A wonderful book full of insights into the lesser-known world of bryology, expressed in captivating, passionate and sometimes heart-breaking anecdotes.

I found Robin’s writings as a Native American and indigenous teacher incredibly interesting - she writes about the Native American relationship with plants and nature, and her research into the roles mosses have played in Native American life.

This book also made me buy a hand lens and spend a significant amount of time invading the personal life of my plants and their inhabitants.

I wanted to love this book but unfortunately the way I read and think is completely dissonant from it. Probably one of those books that I should not have picked up as an Audiobook, because I also did not particularly enjoy the narration style.

It's hard to put into words something so subjective, but I think I grew weary of the fairy-tale tone - which I'm sure comes naturally to the author. My skeptic and perhaps unfortunately cynic world view made it hard to go through a whole chapter without discomfort whenever the author speaks of "plants come when they're necessary" and other traditional ways of thinking about the ecosystem. I appreciate very much getting more contact with the thought process of different cultures, but I was incapable of enjoying this particular opportunity. Maybe I was just too eager to learn the science on mosses and subconsciously grew impatient any time I got anything different; I had the wrong expectations about what this read was going to be.

I'm deliberately speaking of me in this review because I don't think these are problems that lie in the book. We are simply not meant for each other, at least not as I am today. Maybe books are like mosses and this one will show up again whey it's necessary and I'm ready for it.

Essays of humor and humility and care, a sense of observation that stretches from the microscope to scientific inquiry to social obligation, and in a dozen different ways asks us to consider perspectives of place, belonging, and generosity from other being's vast or tiny differences. It's been a while since I read Braiding Sweetgrass, but I think this collection is no lesser for nominally having more of a narrow entryway through her world of moss.

A book I enjoyed so much I bought a second copy to lend to a friend as I didn't want to lose my own copy. Really inspiring but also somewhat depressing when it comes to the state of the world's biodiversity. Could have been a five star - but I think I enjoyed braiding sweet grass more.

I am a big fan of mosses, and so I enjoyed this book greatly. It was great to read the enthusiasm with which Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote about the mosses. The book is mostly aimed at people with little knowledge about mosses (unfortunately, that means nearly everyone), so there is a lot of basic biology in there. She has done quite a nice job of making that into a narrative by tying in various anecdotes and metaphors to the biology. Some of those work better than others, for example it is a bit of a jump from artificial insemination of the neighbour's cattle to reproductive systems of mosses. Nevertheless, on the whole, it works nicely livening up some sections which might have otherwise been on the dull side.
Although I live in Europe, mosses of the American mosses that she mentions are known to me, so that was nice. Their tiny spores (and migratory birds) ensure a worldwide distribution. There were a few unknown to me, like Brotherella , which seems to be a bit like a glossy Hypnum; also nice to make their acquaintance.
The descriptions of the field work are very recognisable to those of us who have done that sort of thing. I spent three summers with a tape recorder around my neck, standing in rivers reciting scientific names into it, so well remember the strange looks and comments that you get when doing that. Likewise, the description of the painstaking work of counting huge numbers of markers was familiar. I once had to cut ten thousand Sphagnum plants (or was it 10 000 of each species, I don't remember now?) to exactly 4 cm length, then measure how much they had grown over a year, and then repeat that the next year, and the next.
An extra dimension that the book promised was the insights and spirituality of the native American (Onondaga) heritage of the author. I was a little disappointed there. Some of it was difficult to understand. "...a place of power, vibrating with energy exchanged at a long wavelength", for instance. I don't know what the "long wavelength" means there, also as an analogy. A bit more depth in explaining about those concepts would have been nice. There was one concept which came back repeatedly, and that is one I have great difficulty with; "plants come to us when they are needed". Perhaps it is my lack of understanding, but it seems to me that the idea that the purpose of plants and animals being to serve the interests of humans has caused an awful lot of environmental destruction. In that sense, I was horrified to read that the author mentions the use of Sphagnum peat for compost in such an offhand way. Horticulture has been responsible for the destruction of huge areas of really important wetlands, and I would have expected the author to very clearly condemn it and warn her readers not to use peat-based compost. In that context, I am sure that she would agree that those plants are not there just for our needs, but have a right to exist for their own value.
I found one small mistake in the book. She says that most mosses only have scientific names. That is not correct, all UK mosses (and therefore many American) have English names, not to mention that all the mosses here in the Netherlands and Belgium have Dutch names and all the German mosses have German names (and I think French and Spanish names exist as well).
Unfortunately, the publishers have not done a good job with the ebook edition that I read. The page numbering is messed up and the aspect ratio of the illustrations is incorrect, so the images are distorted, which is a pity.
But those are small drawbacks in what is undoubtably a very worthwhile book.

Exquisite. Sublime. My initial reaction ("Moss? A book about moss?") was mercifully brief: I sensed that this was a work of love -- so I dove into it that same day, and indeed it is. A work of love and beauty and grace. Kimmerer lovingly and knowledgeably writes not just about mosses but about so much in life that's in plain sight yet we never see. She writes of balances, ecosystems, interweavings; and, necessarily, of destruction we're not even aware of. Her language is delicate yet captivating. This is a rare jewel of a book.

I've always been fascinated with micro-environments, perhaps as far back as when Brainiac shrank the city of Kandor on Krypton and Superman put it in a bottle. I see a lot of Moss when I hike, but I only know a few basic things about it. This book is a fine simple introduction to bryology. The author is a bryologist, a Native American and a great writer. The chapters discuss some aspect of moss ecology, physiology or reproduction and tie this to a story about the author's family, neighbors or tribe. A thread of respect for the environment runs through it all. The book won the John Burroughs Medal for Natural History Writing and I recommend it to any natural historian.
(Of some interest, I noted in my review of "The Life of a Leaf" that the author stated that the velocity of a viscous fluid is 0 at the luminal surface and that's why you can't just rinse off dirty dishes; Dr. Kimmerer essentially discusses the same thing in chapter 3 about the "boundary layer" - the place where mosses live.)