All around us, moss can be found:
On concrete, plastic chairs, abandoned cars, rocks by the water, and of course, on most trees and forest floors.
And yet, despite being everywhere, most humans don't care about it and don't want it near their homes. We scrape it off roofs, pressure-wash it from pavements, we treat it like a nuisance to be removed.
But moss isn't a parasite. It's a vital part of our ecosystems, quietly protecting and healing life, from the soil to the treetops.
Mosses are some of the oldest plants on the planet.They were here before trees, and trees existed 400 million years before humans. (When we say humans showed up last, but the West acts like we arrived first...)
Mosses are incredibly resilient. They can survive almost anything from frost to drought, they just adapt.
They also protect the rest of their ecosystems acting like giant sponges, storing and regulating water flow, which helps during both floods and droughts.
And when we add them all together, mosses are one of the Earth's biggest carbon sinks.
(This is why we should never buy peat compost.)
But still, when we talk about the climate crisis, mosses are often forgotten, unseen and unprotected.
They help prevent soil erosion, by holding in moisture and nutrients which allows other plants to grow.
In cities, they act as insulation, keeping things cool in summer and warm in winter.
They absorb fine particles and pollutants.
They're like tiny forests, home to billions of insects (like tardigrades), fungi, and amphibians.
And here's the wild part: some of those creatures are carnivorous, eating each other. Others are herbivores. And they all live together in a bit of moss, on a branch.
And one of the main reasons I think mosses are incredible it's because after 450 million years on Earth (reminder: humans have only been here for 1 million):
They show us that it's possible to thrive without extraction or destruction.
They don't have deep roots.
They don't need much more than air to exist.
They take only what they need.
And they support ecosystems with billions of lives, without needing any of them to survive.
So maybe it's time we stop thinking humans are at the top of the pyramid of the living world,
And realise that mosses are our elders. We exist because of them.
So let's protect them and treat them with the dignity they deserve.