I conducted this project as part of Professor Pringle’s EEB321 class at Princeton University.

Everyday on campus, I walk past delightful little green patches of moss. No matter the weather, blaring summer heat, freezing winter days, there's always a patch of happy green moss here if you're looking for it. The green always comes with such depth, such story. Something that the leaves on campus trees or that the blades of grass can't always capture. While the grass is often trampled and trees are more and more often cut to make way for fancy new departmental buildings, moss is always constant. I wonder about the ways the consistency and vibrancy of moss makes way in the world, who relies on this moss and who is endlessly thankful for its continued thriving, other than me and the moss, of course.

The last time I used a microscope must have been middle school science class. I remember distinctly looking at slices of leaves, swabs of inner cheek. I realize, though, that beyond slices of leaves and swabs of cheek I don't know what anything else really looks like under the microscope. I was curious to know what the above little green goddesses (I mean in reference to lovely little patches of moss) would show. I think about how when I see moss, I only ever see it for its big clump, its big vibrant patch calling out to me to touch its squishy softness. But I never think about moss in its smaller components, made up of its individual outreaching tendrils. Moss is so often defined by its tendency to form large clumps, but what does it mean to think about moss as smaller than that?

I found this individual growing voraciously among a clump in the cracks of pavement near Fine Hall, the math department building on campus.


Looking at it under the microscope, I first noticed how visually fluid the moss seemed. It wasn't quite so rigid as perhaps a leaf would be, but instead seemed to flow in shape and quite honestly reminded me a lot of the way kelp looks floating with the currents underwater.



I looked at patches of moss still attached to the soil I tore it from. The contrast between the green fluidity of the moss and the round segmented bits and pieces of soil was interesting to see. I think about all the nutrients and water and other resources the soil must provide to the moss to allow for its constant vibrancy. How does the moss do it? It must be the same soil that the trees and the grass grow on and yet the moss succeeds when the grass doesn't. Maybe it's the human intervention, maybe it's the lower requirement of resources that the moss needs. Maybe it's the intense spatial heterogeneity of the soil.


Finally, I was able to focus the microscope further and visualize the individual cells that make up the moss. Rigid, tiny little things. I think about what potential microcosms exist within the moss, the moss as its own organization of life within it. The cells resemble those of the leaves I remember from childhood. How do the inner workings of moss cells compare to say the cells of a blade of grass?