Species habitat knowledge exposes a moss sculpture as fake nature

Evidence

At the center of the garden stood a sculptured rock taller than either of us and beautifully covered with mosses. Each carefully chosen clump accented the irregularities of the boulder. An eroded pocket in the rock was filled with a perfect circlet of Bryum. The artistry rivaled any piece we had seen in the gallery and yet it struck the wrong note; the collection was only an illusion of nature. Plagiothecium can’t grow in crevices like that, and Racomitrium wouldn’t share a habitat with Anomodon, despite the beauty of their colors side by side. I wondered how this beautiful but synthetic creation passed the owner’s standard of authenticity. The mosses had been reduced from living things to mere art materials, ill used. “How did you get these to grow like this?” I asked. “It’s very—unusual,” I hedged. Matt smiled like a kid who had outsmarted his teacher and answered, “Superglue.” — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 514

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Feeds the ‘On Sacrifice’/ecological authenticity thread and the Grafting ADDENDUM — but strongest tie is to the reader’s observational method: habitat-distribution knowledge (species’ real niches) is exactly what lets Kimmerer read the assembled rock as artifice, a fine-scale disturbance/landscape reading.
• XREF: connects to: Objects become authentic only through use, not through display — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 511