Colonial packing, not individual form, is what holds water in moss

Evidence

Moss plants almost never occur singly, but in colonies packed as dense as an August cornfield. The nearness of others with shoots and leaves intertwined creates a porous network of leaf and space which holds water like a sponge. The more tightly packed the shoots, the greater the water-holding capacity. Adense turf of a drought-tolerant moss may exceed three hundred stems per square inch. Separated from the rest of a clump, an individual moss shoot dries immediately. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 185

Categorization

• CANDY: The image of a single moss shoot drying immediately when pulled from its packed colony is a precise, tweetable natural-history fact.
• ADDENDUM: Colonial moss packing as water infrastructure parallels grafting/root-fusion as underused natural infrastructure in the trees essay, reversed to the smallest scale.
• XREF: connects to: Mosses move water passively by harnessing surface forces rather than expending energy — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 200; Mosses stay small because they have no water-conducting vascular tissue — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 89; Drying mosses contort into unrecognizable shapes as a water-conserving strategy — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 204 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Moss leaf shape optimizes for water where trees optimize for light #qualifies (0.78) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 191
• Drying mosses contort into unrecognizable shapes as a water-conserving strategy #qualifies (0.70) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 204