Urban mosses are ancient cliff companions, not recent stragglers

Evidence

We tend to devalue the flora of cities as a depauperate collection of stragglers, arising de novo with the relatively recent development of cities. In fact, the urban cliff hypothesis suggests that the association between humans and these species may be ancient, dating from our pre-Neanderthal days when we both took refuge in cave and cliff dwellings. In creating cities, we have incorporated design elements of the cliff habitat and our companions have followed. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 387

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Urban mosses as cliff-habitat companions that followed humans into cities parallels my trees-as-infrastructure piece about how species track human-built structures; here the same logic runs at the finest scale.
• XREF: Reinforces the disturbance-history and land-change reading central to the polyad — cities as recreated cliff habitat is a deep-timescale habitat analogue. — connects to: Human-built structures replicate scarce natural cliff habitats for mosses — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 385; Old-growth moss communities embody centuries that no technique can compress — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 535; Old-growth moss mats recover almost not at all once stripped from trees — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 607

Broader Connections

• Old-growth moss communities embody centuries that no technique can compress #corroborates (0.85) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 535
• Old-growth moss mats recover almost not at all once stripped from trees #corroborates (0.80) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 607