Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

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Kimmerer is amazing at showing how the smallest of things (mosses, in the case) are interconnected with the rest of the ecological system...and humans. And how humans have disrupted the system so much, how out of balance so many of us are with nature. By publishing your document, the content will be optimally indexed by Google via AI and sorted into the right category for over 500 million ePaper readers on YUMPU. Gathering Moss is a blend of science and poetry, just the right kind of book I love. I've learned quite a few things about moss. What is moss? Can you distinguish moss from lichen? The reproduction strategy of moss. Ancient moss protection is inadequate in US. The rootless moss can be more difficult to transplant than trees.

Meeting with good books makes me feel as happy as can be. I learned the name of Robin Wall Kimmerer in the book review of the Japanese Newspaper, in which they introduced a recently published Japanese version of Gathering Moss. Her essays sometimes sound like a maxim of a philosopher, and in other times like a serious warning from an ecologist. Before everything else, she is a naive botanical scientist. She wrote about her excitement when she found evidence about chipmunks' playing important role in diffusing moss. We can understand her delight without any doubt. She says we cannot understand things until we know them by using all of our four aspect; mind, body, emotion and spirit. We only need attentiveness to understand things. Further she points out finding the words is another step in learning to see. Knowing things' name is the first step in regaining our connection with them. Losing their names is a step in losing respect to them, on the contrary. Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. Gathering moss is a mix of science and personal reflection that invites readers to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses. In this series of linked personal essays, Robin Kimmerer leads general readers and scientists alike to an understanding of how mosses live and how their lives are intertwined with the lives of countless other beings. Kimmerer explains the biology of mosses clearly and artfully, while at the same time reflecting on what these fascinating organisms have to teach us. Drawing on her experiences as a scientist, a mother, and a Native American, Kimmerer explains the stories of mosses in scientific terms as well as in the framework of indigenous ways of knowing. In her book, the natural history and cultural relationships of mosses become a powerful metaphor for ways of living in the world

The engine of her next book will be “ecological compassion” for plants. She would like people to come to understand them as sovereign beings in their own right, if not people. “The research in plant intelligence that is being done is already revolutionising science,” she says, “so my next project is designed to elicit in the reader a sense of compassion and justice for them. I would like people to recognise their culture. Take off your anthropocentric lenses, and you will see that they have very rich cultural lives.” Digital Reads A Curse For True Love : the thrilling final book in the Once Upon a Broken Heart series

I fully appreciate her answer to the homeowner who complains about moss in their lawn. They always want to kill it. Robin responds mosses cannot kill grasses. They simply haven't the ability to outcompete them. Mosses appear in a lawn when conditions for moss growth are better than conditions for grass growth. Too much shade or water, too low a pH, soil compaction--any of these things can discourage grasses and let the mosses appear. Killing the mosses would not help the ailing grass in any way. Better to increase the sunlight, or better, pull out the remaining grass and let nature build you a first-rate moss garden. Hear hear!!! Impressed by the previous book I read by this author, Braiding Sweetgrass, I decided to reach for her older book, even though I was in doubt just how interesting it could be to learn in detail about mosses. And yet, I was positively surprised. I ended up gaining knowledge I never knew I wanted and enjoyed myself in the process. There's some genuinely great stuff in here about Kimmerer's experience and life long study of moss - sections on tardigrades (squee!), sorrow over illegal moss harvesting and the slow pace of moss regeneration, a moss that grows almost entirely in the dark, and even some excellent dinner conversation material ("The indigestible fiber of mosses has been reported from a surprising location - the anal plug of hibernating bears"). But I'm really not sure whom this book is intended for, as it seems a bit too science-y for those who are casually interested in mosses, and yet too memoir-y for scientists.Lccn 2002151221 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.15 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-1200092 Openlibrary_edition urn:lcp:gatheringmossnat0000kimm:epub:97e743d7-a517-4e4d-ae2e-fdac3da3439b Foldoutcount 0 Identifier gatheringmossnat0000kimm Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s26twwnt157 Invoice 1652 Isbn 0870714996 Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. Gathering Moss is a beautifully written mix of science and personal reflection that invites listeners to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses.