Human-built structures replicate scarce natural cliff habitats for mosses

Evidence

A city offers mosses a multitude of habitats which may otherwise be quite uncommon in nature. Some moss species are far more abundant in the human-made environment than they are in the wild. Grimmia doesn’t discriminate between a granite crag in the White Mountains and a granite obelisk on Boston Common. Limestone cliffs are not abundant in nature, but there’s one on every Chicago street corner and mosses perch contentedly on its pillars and cornices. Statues provide all kinds of water-holding niches where mosses abound. Next time you walk through the park, look in the folds of the flowing coat of whatever general sits mounted on a pedestal, or in the wavy marble locks of Justice’s hair outside the courthouse. Mosses bathe at the edges of our fountains and trace the letters on our gravestones. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 385

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the trees-as-infrastructure thread: built environments as substitutes for scarce natural substrates — connects to the urban ecology angle and Loewen-style reading of city landscapes. — connects to: Urban mosses are ancient cliff companions, not recent stragglers — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 387; An elite landscape garden was built from moss-covered rock blasted from a wild cliff — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 548
• SEED: The urban-cliff idea (Boston obelisk standing in for a White Mountain crag) is a good interpretive-led walking-tour framing — noticing what habitats our architecture copies.
• CANDY: Mosses growing in the folds of statues’ coats and tracing gravestone letters is a lovely shareable image for non-specialists.