How Moss Works

to it that you do the cheeks. You can't do it, well, I will stand on your chest. Ben will grab one cheek, Jerry will grab the other, and the cheeks will be done. That for people who don't know we're talking about this sounds like really gross. So everybody knows what we're talking about. Chuck does a little cheek poll to start off each episode. It's a little good luck charm. And now he's suddenly decided he's not going to do that anymore. So I have a new good luck term. What is it. It's

called not doing cheeks. It's not it's a bad luck. So I've got a joke for you to open this one up? Do you really? And I made it up today. It's a made up joke. I don't want to hear. What do you call a reproducing sphagnum? What, Randy Moss? That's pretty good? Not bad? No, no, no, that's that's into the realm of pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, that's good to think. If I was a tour guided it like a nature like a firm bank science and or something that would be my good too, for the kids to

try and identify with them. I don't think the kids would like it as much as maybe the teacher. The teacher would be like, that's pretty funny. And by the way, those brownie high socks you're wearing are great. Um, well, I'm going to give an intro an addition to the joke. The intro joke. Maybe that should be your new good luck thing you tell you make a joke, make up a joke for every That would be welcome back. Carter.

Did they have a joke for everyone? Yeah? He introde every show by or maybe it was altrode by telling a joke to his wife. Oh yeah, I hadn't picked up on that. I only saw like maybe two episodes of that show. Well then you heard two jokes, yeah, plus all the other jokes. Was his wife one and the same with Um Bailey from w carp. Didn't they look alike? Were they the same person? I don't know if they were the same person, but they definitely seemed the same. And they both wore glasses. They had the

feathered of long feathered haired seventies ladies. I don't think they were the same though, but they were both probably on the low boat. Yes, yes, within five years as like a way to revitalize their career. Um Chuck, I was going to talk about the ice age, the beginning of the ice age, or of ice ages, glacial periods. Remember right now, we're in the midst of an interglacial period, right.

I want you to think back way back four hundred and seventy million years ago, there was no such thing as a glacial period, and by proxy, there's no such thing as an interglacial period. All we had was one hot, soupy, barren mess of land and ocean and that was it. That's right. This is what's called the Ordovician period or or d Vichian period, depending on where you come from. Uh and uh, the the beginning of this period is

characterized by ice ages, and um paleo geologists. I guess you could just call them geologists really, because nobody's studying like present stuff very much. It's mostly paleo geology. Right. They were like, where did this ice age come from? Where? Like when did this start? And they figured out that what triggered this was the arrival of the very first

basic lane and plants e g. Mosses, that's right. And they recently figured out, um that mosses came about about four seventy million years ago, and they triggered these ice ages by latching onto rocks. So these were a certain type of moss as you and I know, called granite mosses, and they would actually leech materials from these rocks to use as nutrients and minerals. Right, these are like wheaties

for moss. Early moss, Well, the moss started releasing stuff, releasing h no sucking in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere enough to reduce the global temperature mean temperature by eight degrees centigrade, which led to the beginning of ice ages and the ice age periods that we know and love. You can thank moss for that. You go outside, you find a little bit of moss, you grab a little piece of it gently and then shake it sand shake it a little. Thanks for the ice ages. Well, we

needed ice ages. Yeah, there remains to be seen. That's all part of the big soup. We've had. Some might doubt it. We've had some chilly, windy weather lately, and it has been getting to me like it's been like just seeing the trees, like getting whipped outside makes me feel chilly and then in turn I feel socially isolated and mad. Wow. Yeah, it's been really windy. Yeah. Crazy. So we're talking about moss. This is no joke. April

is over by now. We're in it right now, but by the time it comes out, this is no April fool's joke. We're talking about moss and how it works because it's part of our long parade of explaining absolutely everything in the known universe that's right at moss is Moss is part of that. It's part of that. So let's talk about moss. Well, moss is pretty fun and unique in some ways if you ask me, uh, because unlike most flowering plants and trees, or let me go ahead,

and say it all flowering prants, prants and trees. Um, they don't have roots like traditional root systems. Moss doesn't know mosses don't they do not. Um, they don't germinate from seeds. Pretty weird. And uh, they don't gush water around through internal systems and systems. Yeah, and that's weird. It is, especially if you're familiar with plants. Then you're like, well, when moss is strangely for somebody, you know, an average bystanderd like me, I'm like, okay, well, moss doesn't do that,

and plants do. It doesn't seem particularly weird to me, but I do find it intriguing. It makes me want to know more about moss. Well, you got about fifteen thousand species if you want to talk about moss. Uh. Traditionally you were probably going to think of moss as the true moss. Well, let's back up a little bit. They're related to the liver wort and hornwart. Yeah. I've seen. I saw other articles on moss, and everybody points that

out for some reason. I'm I'm not sure if they're like, I gotta put ten things in about moss, and that's what I got. Nine until put that. Uh they are in the phylum uh Brio FDA, and they're in three groups. You've got the granite mosses, the pete mosses, and true mosses. Um. True mosses are probably what we're going to think of when you think of the little green carpet like padding that you see every kind of fallen tree in a forest or something. Yeah, and there are tons of true moss,

like fourteen species um. Granite mosses are blackish, small growing Arctic regions in the mountains, grow on rocks. They're the most ancient moss apparently, that's right, and they're only about a hundred species of that. And then the final sub group is the pete moss grows in bogs. Have you ever been in a bog, then you've probably seen some pete moss or sphagnum mos, right, And that's the money moss because you can burn it and converted to electricity, yeah,

and charge money for it. That's why Sphagnum is the money moss. And oddly or not oddly, but remarkably moss, the Sphagnum moss do you use as a soil conditioner? We do that in our garden. Because some of it can hold twenty times it's dry weight and water. It's pretty amazing. That's very amazing. That's some strong moss. You're gonna find moss all over the place, including places where you won't find any other living plants, like the bottom

of an Arctic or Antarctic lake. That is pretty impressive. Like, the only multicellular plant growing down there is moss, and it grows really slow. I think as little as one centimeter per year, this aquatic moss at the bottom of these frozen lakes, and that is the slowest growing and

longest living freshwater plant ever recorded, I would guess. So it's kind of like um putting somebody on ice, right, slow going down the cellular processes, but they're still active, so you could by by in theory, extend their lifespan, right, that's right, the same thing with moss. Yeah, it's probably even easier with moss. And by that same token, um

the zombie moss I thought was pretty cool. Yeah, you could dry some mosses out for nineteen years without water, and if you add water to it, it'll, you know, it'll turn into a big dinosaur. It's pretty cool though. If they didn't go dormant for that long. Yeah, it's amazing. And all mosses can go dormant, it's like one of their defense mechanisms. Still just turn brown and dry out

and there dormant state. Unfortunately, you can't really tell, like what the differences between dead and dormant until you add water and see if it comes back. That's the only way to determine the length of a moss's dormancy. Oh so if you add water and it just stays dead, then it was dead. That's sad. Um. So you said there's like fifteen thousand species, and they kind of range in size and shape and texture color. Um. Some of the I think the peat mosses grow different colors like

rose yep. Some grow black like the granite moss. You said, some are silver, which is amazing. Um. And then there's the smallest mosses, the Ephemorum, which is half a millimeter tall. It's adult size. Um. And then there's the Dawsonia, which is up to almost thirty inches seventy centimeters in height, which that's pretty wide variety. Okay, some moss is fairly interesting.

So far, let's talk about the individual plants, because when you look at um moss, and you think about moss, you're thinking of a carpet of plants, right, Those are actually like a bunch of little plants put together. Correct, Yeah, okay, yeah, sure, that's that's one way I think of it. So when you're when you're talking about moss, um, when you're talking about the individual parts are the individual plants. They're pretty simple, They're pretty basic. You have um something called the gameta

fight which is the stem and the leaves. Right. The leaves are generally arranged in a spiral pattern. Uh. And the leaves are usually um a lance shaped with like a point. Right. That's where you're gonna find your reproductive parts, right. Um. At the bottom there's rhizoids instead of roots. Remember these are not roots and um, so they don't anchor themselves to anything necessarily. They will the anchor themselves to like

maybe organic material something, but it's not into the dirt. Um. And they also don't they don't suck up water in the same way that roots do, but they do use rhizoids a lot of it's kind of academic. The difference is really between rhizoids and roots. In my opinion, I'm going to get some mail about that, but I think that they're very similar. Yeah, but I mean the fact that it can grow on a rock kind of instead

of soil kind of says it all. Okay, so um, in the uh gameta fight, you're gonna have, like I said, your reproductive parts, both male and female. Um. And then we'll mention this because it comes around later on when we talk about the reproduction emerging from the top of the female gameta fight is a sporta fight and a thin stock called a sita, and a little brown ball

on top of that known as the um capsule. And then on top of that is the a perculum, and it's like a little hat that the capsule wears um and that that comes into play. Uh well, let's talk about how it gets nutrients. Then we'll talk about the dirty stuff, the randy moss. Yeah exactly. That was a pretty funny joke, that silly. Okay, so Um. A moss needs a few things to live, and one of those

is water. Of course, possibly one of the most important ingredients because it aids in not just the not just photosynthesis, but also in reproduction, which we'll see. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, boy, we've really built up this sexy monster. Not as interesting as we're making it. Yeah, there's no like riding crops involved or anything like that. Well, but there are parts yeah, okay, so um yeah, And I was surprised by the number of parts. I didn't

realize they were that involved. I thought it was like, here's a spore, yeah, and go forth and reproduce um anyway with with that water that moss needs because moss mosses need like pretty much across the board. One of their great characteristics is a moist environment, right, um, and they need this water or they get this water since they lack roots in a number of different ways. Some have very absorbent leaf surfaces where you can pour drop of water leaping and goes. It's just gone. It's pretty

amazing thing to watch, spongey sure. Um. And then another way is the rise of ways, which although they aren't roots, still managed to suck up water. And they do this through capillary action in the same way that like a

paper towel. If you if you put a drop of paper drop of water on your kitchen counter, ask your mom first before doing this, because someone will freak out on you if you do something like this, UM, put a drop of water on your kitchen counter and take a single thing of paper towel, set it next to it, just barely touching, and the paper towel go suck it up. It's amazing. That's capillary action and it's the result of

the UM adhesion. In this case, will say, with rhizomes, the adhesion of a water molecule to the rhizome rhizoid is greater than the UM cohesion between that water molecule and all the other water molecules. As part of it's a quicker picker upper nice. Uh So, once you've got a little water in there, the water's gonna be moved between cells um or transported through cells, depending on the moss. And then you're gonna get your photosynthesis, which is, you know,

part of being a plant. Do you like this analogy? I didn't find it apt necessarily. I just ignored it. So at the end of photosynthesis, you're gonna have sugar and oxygen as a byproduct. Releases the oxygen like a good little plant, and UM eats the sugar basically yeah and says give me more. Yes, UM, So it converts the sugar into energy to break down minerals say that it's leaked from rocks or a tree stump or whatever it's attached to to grow and to reproduce. That's right.

I think we're at the sexy moss point. Reproduction occurs can occur in a couple of ways, and the first way is UM. For the reproduction to begin, we're gonna have to get a vase shaped um arcagonia. It's getting all like a Georgia O'Keefe painting in here. It is um, and that's gonna produce the eggs that develops at the

tip of the gameta fight, which we talked about. And then on the male side, you've got the antheridia and that produces a sperm, and the sperm swims through basically fertilizes the eggs, which is why they need to be moist. Like you said, the sperm swims through nearby water to get to the egg. It's pretty remarkable. It's almost like a fish. Yeah, but it's a sperm, that's right. So it's more like a tadpole. Yeah, that's what you mean. Um. And then the egg is sportlies. You're gonna get a

sporti fight. UM. We already talked about the SPORTI fight. That's the tall, thin stalk with a little uh, a perculum at the top. A perculum is gonna open up at a certain point. That's the hat released. The tip of the hat happens, releases the spores, which are basically like seeds, and and uh, there you have it. Well, yes, and then the spore goes and germinates like a seed. This this is what I'm saying, rhizoid root, spore seed. I mean, I know that there's some differences here, but

they're not that great anyway. The spore goes, lodges itself into a different than every other plant, other millions of plants. Okay, I understand, I get it. I know that there are differences. I'm just saying, like, the difference between the two is not like a wow kind of thing for me. I get you. I wish it was. I understand. I'm not

fighting it. Um So, the the the the spore germinates into another plant and said, and the whole thing happens again, hopefully not with any plant that it's related to though. That's christ um So. The other way it can reproduce is a sexually, which is pretty cool. Um and basically, if you've got enough more sture and a piece of moss breaks off and floats downstream or gets caught up in the wind and it roots down in a nice moist place, it'll reproduce. It'll just start growing again. It's

pretty amazing. But it doesn't root rhizoids, rhizomes rhizoids. What is the I think I'm confusing ribo flaving with something else to get rhizomes. Um. Okay, So we have healthy, sexually active moss everywhere all over the place. We understand them. Um, I mean we understand them now, Like that's moss right there. Oh we like that. One interesting fact I thought, there's their leaves. The tiny little leaves are so small, they're very rarely one cell thick. Yeah that's tiny. Yeah, it's

neat um okay. So now that we understand moss, if you have said I like moss a lot, I've seen moss before. I want to bring more moss into my life. I happen to have a yard, so I'm gonna introduce moss to it. We we we now can say, yes, here's how you do it, because we understand moss, and here is how you do it. Yeah, And I like, I like to look a moss like to go between plants or like in Japanese gardens, mosses like big yeah

crazy big uh. So if you want to grow some moss, one thing you can do sometimes is just transplant, like gently scrape it off that rock and a you know, sort of like a big chunk of like a carpet squares you can get and just throw it on the ground and water it water, and sometimes that will be important. It is yeah, not always um if you if you put it in the right kind of place. Mosses require

low sunlight basically shade. In fact, if you have low sunlight and you have trouble growing grass, moss is a great alternative. It is very much so um you So they want low sunlight or shade. UM, and they also prefer low acidity um, lower acidity than turf grass prefers. So yeah, if you have a patchy piece of piece of yard, moss might grow there very well. So and just transplanting it like that could work, especially if you

keep it water. You can also um try propagating it using a pretty ingenious little method of um taking a clump a whole bunch of moss um thrown it in a blender with some buttermilk and then taking that mixture with the paintbrush and painting it wherever you want. Very cool. Yeah, buttermilk, it just must be the wonder thing for the moss. Yeah, it's like with the packed with nutrients. You also want to take care of your moss um as as low

maintenance as it seems like. There is some things you have to do, like leaves, twigs, that kind of stuff. Since it's in a shady area, it's usually subject to those things falling on top of it and then actually will um burn it like acid. There won't be a lot of growth in that area of your moss because the leaf is preventing it from doing its thing. Yes, you want to clean it off like you with your carpet. Yes, maybe with a very light broom, very light. Yeah, a

leafblower on a low setting, which you hate. Yeah, I just don't like the noise. But in this case it makes sense unless you have a very light broom, or you could just pick these things off individually. If it's got weeds, you don't want to yank the weeds out because that can yank up moss. You don't want to do that. So you just want to like snip it with scissors, and it's no wonder. This is popular in Japan because they're always more like tinder and carrying with

their gardens. Anyone who has the patients for like bonzai and origami and things like that, well we'll snip weeds with scissors. You mean. And I were in Kyoto and witness the man cutting the grass at a park with scissors. Yeah, my neighbor used to do that in my old house. Man, but Islam look awesome, all bat Yeah, Uh, I don't have time for that crap. No one has time for that. Um so yeah, keep it well fed, as in once

a year aside from the water. You're gonna want to in mid spring, get out your butter milk again, so basically like right now or like last week. Yeah, true, get about a quarter bottom butter milk, mix it with a couple of gallons of water, and uh, spray it, spray it all over and missed your moss. They love missed. They drink it up literally. Yeah, well they use it capillary action to drink it up, that's right, no roots involved. Let's say you want to kill moss. Yeah, I thought

that This is very interesting. In this article, it's like all pro moss, and then all of a sudden it takes a really dark turn with the subject heading how to kill moss. Well, some people don't want it, you know, like they don't want ivy taking over their yard. They don't want moss taking over their yards. Although they point out in the article it's not going to take over your lawn because it's not going to grow where your

lawn would grow. Right, it's a lighten up. But if you're one of those people who are prone to slipping things, you may not want that on your sidewalk. Um. You definitely don't want moss on your roof. There's a sign that you have a big problem if you have moss on your roof, unless you are doing that on purpose, like a green roof, Well, then you're not going to have the kind of roof that you have to worry about. Exactly.

If you have a traditional shingled roof and you have moss, you need to do something about it for a couple of reasons. One, uh, it's the presence of moss. Trapped moisture. Moss is designed to do that. If you're in an into intelligent design theory. Um, and that means that it's going to foster things like fungus that will decay the wood beneath, meaning you'll have a hole in your roof at some point. Um. The rhizomes, right, rhizoids, what is

wrong with me? I don't know. The rhizoids also like to get in between shingles and loosen them, that's right. And what else? Uh? Well, I mean you don't want it on your roof, and so one thing you can do to kill it is use pesticides and chemicals, not pesticide. I guess it would be a herbicide. Yeah, they say pesticide in here. That wouldn't be right now, it's a herbicide yeah, um like round up sure, which, if you're into spring that kind of junk on your lawn, feel free.

I advise not to. But that's just how I play in my yard. But what so you don't use scissors, but you don't use pesticides. Huh huh um, you just kick back and you're like grow baby. No, I take care of things, but I just don't like I just don't like spring chemicals all over there? What do you use as herbicides and pesticides white vinegar. M hm. Yeah, like is a spray for what does that work for? Anything? Like pesticide and herbicide or I don't know about pesticide,

but herbicide, Like it'll kill weeds and stuff. That's interesting. Uh yeah, put it in the Hudson sprayer and um or just live with it. Yeah. I guess it depends on the weed for sure. But if you have animals, you don't want to be spraying your yard with chemicals. Even though they say like once it drives, it's fine,

I don't buy it. I don't buy it either. Um. But if you do want to get rid of it, um, they say the best way to get rid of it naturally is to, you know, make it a not moss friendly environment, so like cut back some some shade cover, maybe make it sunnier. That will help get rid of the moss. Yeah, just make it so it wouldn't want to live there if even if it could, or scrape it off if it's like on a sidewalk or something, Yeah, that could, so it may come back, don't be surprised.

But yeah, just the flat shovel or a hole will take care of moss usually too. That's right, says here zinc. Yeah I didn't. I didn't know about this strip up on your roof and it'll keep mall is a way hate that stuff, that's right. Um. And then the last moss fact of the podcast. If you're ever lost in the woods, you need to get your bearings. Start looking around and see what side of the trees and um, well, pretty much an upright growing tree, what side moss is

growing on? And you probably have found something like north, because moss is gonna grow on the side that gets the least exposure to sunlight, which would be north. So we just follow that and you will end up in Canada every time, even if you start out in Australia. Hey Australia. All right, well that's moss. Huh, you got anything else. I'm gonna grow a little moss gard in my front yard, are you going to? Yeah? Well I was gonna zero escape it anyway, so they might as

well get some moss. Go on. I wrote an article on that escaping. Yeah, but the problem is is this isn't zero escaping because that's dry landscaping. This requires yeah water, but it's still be pretty low maintenance. Yeah, in my front yard doesn't get very much sun like I failed miserably at trying to grow grass. I'm just gonna like mulch and moss and nice put plants and stuff. I'd

like to see that. Yeah, one day. Um, if you want to know more about moss, including seeing some very pretty pictures of moss um and to get to the bottom of the what Chuck and I decided was an in apt analogy between photosynthesis and cookie baking. Um, you can type in moss in the search bart how stiff works dot com and will bring this up and you will be very happy. And you should also be happy because I said search bars means it's time for a listener. Mayal, Josh,

You're gonna call this the nicest irishman on Earth. Wow, this guy was super nice, Uh, Josh, Chuck and Jerry. My name is John Keating and I'm writing from Dublin, Ireland. I've been a reas s nomably long time listener. I started listening to the show over a year ago when I started studying for my leaving start the Irish University entry exams. On a number of occasions during my exams, I was able to recall a topic you guys covered

during the series, especially in English and history. Due to this, I peel I owe you a great deal of thanks, as I was accepted to the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin better known as Trinity College and it's go Thunderbolts in case you're curious. During the year in Trinity, it was announced that a fraternity is to be established within the college. In Ireland as well as in the UK, society and clubs take

up the role of frats that frats have in the US. However, one exception is normally these clubs societies do not have a particular house associated with them like we do. Hear uh. This house concept is something I'll have to deal with the near future, as I shall be staying in the Beta Theta Pigh branch of the University of Toronto on

in the city in search of work this summer. On this side of the Atlantic, the frat concept is mainly centered around their depiction in such movies as Animal House or how the Winklevoss twins were portrayed in the social networks. Did you see those guys entering a commercial for like pistachios? I did? It's awful, Hey, man, they're gonna make that dollar some way. Huh. Yeah, the multimillion dollar payout wasn't though. Yeah. Um, they were wealthy already. Yeah, exactly. They seemed like nice

enough guy. Oh, they seem like great guys, um and such. We see them as being an alcohol fuelled rich boys club except for the College of Pharmacies fraternity. What are they like? It's a pill fueled club. Um. I know that both of you weren't associated with the frat when you were in college, so maybe I'm right on the

button there. Also, I'm curious as to why the idea hasn't successfully been exported to Ireland, in the UK and further afield, and what exactly is the association with the Greek alphabet and why did they develop in the US in the first place. So he wants us to do a podcast. Oh I thought he wanted us to answer now, as this email has already exceeded the limit I felt it would, so I shall end it on this note. I just want to further emphasize my gratitude and respect I have for the s Y s K team and

all the individuals involved in how stuff works. Here's hoping for a successful venture on the TV. Best of luck and slam. Let's be an irish thing, s l a M. I never heard of that. Is it like in an acronym for something or No, it just says best of lucking slam. So we'll probably hear about that. And that is from John Keating. Thank you, John. That is very nice of you. That was a very nice email, wasn't it. Do you want to do frats? Yeah? I think we should at some point. Well, I guess we have to

explain everything. If we did moss, we have to do frats. Right, Um, let's see what should we call for, Chuck. I don't believe anybody could possibly have a moss story, which makes me want to hear one. Well, that means people go, oh boy, you didn't think you'd get a moss story. Listen to this, Okay, so we might as well ask for it. I once laid so still for a year I had moss growing on my side. That'd be pretty cool. That would be cool. And then there's the tree man,

who I think some people call the moss man. I don't think I know them. Oh you do? He there's a video on how stuff works as this man who hand it's like some sort of HPV and like he's growing like bark like skin. Yeah, I've seen that. Yeah, I think he's called a tree man. Though it's not the moss man, is it. I don't know. It's sad, So we've already heard about that guy. Don't send us any links to that video seeing it. But if you do have an interesting moss story, we want to hear it.

Not only that, if it's interesting enough, we'll promote it on the show the listener Mail. You can tweet at least the first hundred and forty characters of your moss story to us at s Y s K podcast. You can post a bunch of it on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know, and you can send us the whole shebang at stuff podcast at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Mhmm brought to you

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