A Moss Girl’s Guide to Japanese Moss Viewing | Hacker News Reader

A Moss Girl’s Guide to Japanese Moss Viewing

ignition.co

185 pointsnkurz44 comments

In the past 6 months, Seattle has gone from near-drought condition to very wet. I can only describe the experience of watching the mosses in the area around my apartment building go from dessicated to luminescent green as sublime. Particularly visible has been the mosses that live right off my back porch. In August, they had turned the color of dirt; today, they are a particularly aggressive almost-neon green with hints of yellow. The concrete around a (rather sad) tree and bush by the entrance has gone from a pale grey to a green-grey as the mosses have come back.

I can quite fathom why mosses are a big thing!

edit: if someone has read "Mosses, my dear friends"[1], I'd be curious as to the general content, whether photos, or details, or a travelogue, etc. I don't read Japanese, sadly. :-/

http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%82%B3%E3%82%B1%E3%81%AF%E3%81%A8...

I come from Seattle, but haven't lived there for nearly two decades. For some reason, I seem to have spent the intervening time in desert-like climates (central California, the Middle East, northern China). The dampness of Seattle -- in particular the proliferation of moss and fern -- has become a symbol to me of life and health.

I remember once being in Wadi Rum, in Jordan, and amid the totally parched desert finding a deep crevice in a cliff, and way back in the heart of it there was a tiny, tiny trickle of dampness, and maybe a couple of square feet of moss and fern. Just the tiniest little patch, but delicate and absolutely beautiful.

And another time being in the Hoh Rain Forest, on the Olympic Peninsula near Seattle, and looking at a little rill of water that cut through the soil, edged with a profusion of overhanging ferns and mosses, the water completely crystal, and not a hint of death or corruption anywhere. Even the rot was full of life.

How lucky I am to come from a place where water really does mean life!

(And not like the Amazon, where there is water, and life, but much of it is the kind of life that can poison you or inject eggs under your skin or swim up your urethra.)

The waterfalls in the northwest make for absolutely stunning mossy walls. Oneota down in the Columbia Gorge is amazing in the summer (possibly also the winter but it's a bit cold to be traipsing up a river then)

For the last couple years I've been having fun building my own moss walls with this stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertufa

One magical thing some people can do is write about something in a way that it becomes interesting, fascinating to the reader.

I seriously did not expect this, but this was a really interesting article.

The nice thing about moss is, if it's rainy at all (and where I live, it so is), it can grow pretty much anywhere, including my balcony. Guess I'll see that moss on my balcony with different eyes now.

After reading this I decided to go out and take pictures of moss. Here's a picture I took: http://i.imgur.com/rovioAa.jpg near 49.055969, -122.238218.

It's quite relaxing but my tripod got dirty due to the mud.

Beautiful!

Is the thing halfway towards one o'clock the hat of a fungus or the sporangium of a moss?

When I visited Japan I was surprised when my language partner's son had such a huge interest in moss of all things. Where I live in the U.S, moss is largely an unwanted thing akin to mold. Yet here was a man telling me the names of each kind of moss we passed and telling me certain characteristics of them.

I feigned my interest in moss as best as I could. I understand its implications in rock/moss gardens and when a colony is maintained properly it does look rather nice... but to me it is still just moss.

I have a feeling that I simply don't "get it".

> I have a feeling that I simply don't "get it".

As opposed to the bizarre ritual of obsessing over a manicured grass lawn that serves little purpose.

Beauty and purpose are often completely at odds.

There's nothing wrong with not "getting it" - it simply means his fancies lie elsewhere. I didn't read his comment as critical of moss loving, just a recitation of an anecdote where he was the observer.

I freaking love moss since I can remember. I'd visit the hell out of all these places. I don't know why. There's something about their shade of green that is shouting "Life".

How do you feel about mushrooms, flowers, or trees?

I know HN is mostly interested in computers, but plants have some very interesting things to learn about. I like mushrooms and succulents because of the huge variety you can witness - once you start looking at particular things, you see types you've never seen before quite often.

> I know HN is mostly interested in computers, but plants have some very interesting things to learn about.

Indeed, and you can even study them in the context of algorithms: http://algorithmicbotany.org/ - discovered this while reading about L-systems, I find it really fascinating.

Hey, Cory here. I'm a (relatively new) member of that lab.

I think the coolest thing on the site is the book The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants. The PDF is available in the publications section.

TreeSketch is also interesting. There's a fairly approachable paper about it there too. Unfortunately, keeping up with regular maintenance for an iOS App is quite painful for a university lab. It was removed from App Store after its last maintainer moved on, but there has been some discussion about relisting it.

Is the source code of TreeSketch publicly available? If not, is possibly any chance of releasing it?

Sadly, I think the answers are no and no.

I don't see it as much different than obsessing over the different varieties of hardware in a computer; it's a form of nerdery, but directed at natural philosophy rather than made items.

Makes me think of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle where Newton and other scientists of the time are doing fantastic work alongside pulling off butterfly wings and basically nerding out on nature.

> directed at natural philosophy

Beetles are also big in Japan as the kids say. Bigger than moss even.

> Where I live in the U.S, moss is largely an unwanted thing akin to mold.

I think that's due to the US attitude that nature is a thing to be controlled, not nurtured. Moss grows in its natural way, on top of other things, not in its own little individual pot or plot.

The attitude that moss is like mold or that nature is to be controlled doesn't seem like "American" attitudes as far as I've ever heard. I try to speak up whenever I hear people generalizing about the country. The US is extremely diverse and there are tons of preserved areas as well as developed areas. It would be like trying to sum up an attitude of all of Europe regarding moss. It's silly.

Personally I have never really given moss that much thought, it's just something that is around like grass or dirt. Some people are into watching birds, others find that boring. Moss doesn't seem that interesting to me but I'm sure it can be fascinating if you get into it.

I think you may have a point - but national reserves and American's love of camping in the "uncontrolled wilderness" is also a strong counterpoint.

I was also careful to specify "where I live". The U.S is rather large and I'm sure moss gardens are popular in at least one region. Something I find people often forgetting is just how massive the U.S is. Including the people who live in it!

America invented the National Park in fact. One of our nation's innovations I am particularly proud of.

Well, there are both attitudes in both places referenced. In Japan, in contrast to moss, beaches are to be covered in concrete and the ocean controlled by tetrapods[1]. So there are areas where Japan believes in controlling nature.

[1]http://japanfocus.org/-stephen-hesse/2481/article.html

Right. It's like a weed. It's a sign of disrepair.

I'm not saying it's not beautiful in its own way, but it's hardly a uniquely American attitude to consider a sign of neglect undesirable.

I recently watched this episode of Japanology [1] about moss. There is a really interesting and refreshing fascination about moss over there.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBIdOWd9qEM

Thanks! It's also illuminating in regards to water bears; I never figured their ability to dry out would be an evolutionary advantage when living in concert with Moss. (~24 minutes in)

Amazing and inspiring video!

Heh. This is fun. At the garden by Kikuchi-Monji (is that even close to correct? going from memory) - the 'golden temple' in Kyoto - I found this great little moss garden labeled "Very Important Moss (like VIP)":

https://www.flickr.com/photos/devindotcom/2201308564/in/albu...

Kinkakuji (金閣寺) is what you are thinking of.

I don't think you meant to reference 菊一文字 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiku-ichimonji )

I think moss is beautiful. I transplanted a lot of it to my stone garden (with permission from the owner of the nearby forest).

In England where it rains a lot, they use chemicals to try and kill any moss in their lawns. Id be happy if my lawn was nothing but moss though.

I lived in Japan and there is some great moss there, particularly in the very old temples. But I think the moss in New Zealand's old growth forests is better - some of the moss I saw there was almost luminescent.

I wish I had known about this when I lived in NZ (was there for over two years). Yes, the greens in NZ are quite amazing. I even had a nice camera, but I never once thought about taking some maco shots of moss. I miss out on some great opportunities to photo these little mini-forests.

In Japan even the national anthem can't resist the charms of moss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimigayo#Lyrics

To anyone who found this link interesting, I highly recommend picking up "The Signature of All Things" by Elizabeth Gilbert (yes the author who wrote Eat, Pray, Love). The Signature of All Things is historical fiction novel about a botanist who is fascinated by moss and her research leads her to discover evolution independently of Darwin.

Bought it for my beautiful wife for Christmas! And she's enjoying it.

I enjoyed that. I live in the mountains of Central Arizona and am basically addicted to hiking. On hikes I keep an eye out for lichen growths on the side of large rocks, usually in the shade. Really beautiful and very diverse in colors and textures.

The moss in Iceland is also pretty spectacular. While hiking the Falljokull glacier this past summer I learned about "glacier mice": http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/science/earth/glacier-m...

Very interesting: reading this on my phone, the header image moves with a parallax effect when the phone is tilted.

I also noticed this. Very cool!

Don't ever change Japan, best kind of weird sometimes.

(well except that suicide rate, that could afford to change)

scotland has GRRREAT moss as well.

From Scottish Natural Heritage "Naturally Scottish - Mosses and Liverworts":

http://www.snh.gov.uk/publications-data-and-research/publica...

> The author, lost in the invisible world of moss

emphasis mine.

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