Mosses of Cape Horn – Just add water

Mosses of Cape Horn – Just Add Water

Music; Ambience: Campsite and Gorge in southern Chile

JM: The Rip Van Winkles of the botanical world must surely be mosses. And no less remarkable than the power of their rejuvenation is their ability to sustain the life of an ecosystem. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. William Buck is the Curator of Bryophytes at the New York Botanical Garden.

WB: “Bryophytes are a group of organisms that include the mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. Mosses are amazing plants in the sense that they can occur in very wet to very dry habitats. They can completely dry out, shrivel down to almost nothing, and then, in some cases years later when they’re re-hydrated, get wet again-they’ll just come back to life. So, mosses, when they dry out, go into a sort of suspended animation and can stay there for indefinite periods of time, sometimes many years. And this is – if you’re living in a desert, that’s the adaptation you have to be able to do with. And then, when it gets a little rain, usually within a couple of hours, they’re up and photosynthesizing and living again. There are examples of mosses that have been dried and in a herbarium for 50 years, and they’ve wetted them up and had them come back to life.”

JM: The mosses ability to hold on to moisture plays a vital role in its environment.

WB: “Mosses have a number of important ecological values. Probably the most important is that when it rains, mosses absorb the moisture and much more slowly release it than do other kinds of plants and, therefore, maintain the humidity of the whole forest, allowing all the plants to be able to survive there. They also act as seedbeds for trees and other kinds of flowering plants, and they are home to a large number of invertebrates, various kinds of insects and worms and that sort of thing.”

JM: We’ll hear about mosses in future programs. Please visit our website a pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.

Mosses of Cape Horn - Just add water

Meet one of the masters of suspended animation.
Air Date:11/14/2006
Scientist:
Transcript:

Mosses of Cape Horn - Just Add Water

Music; Ambience: Campsite and Gorge in southern Chile

JM: The Rip Van Winkles of the botanical world must surely be mosses. And no less remarkable than the power of their rejuvenation is their ability to sustain the life of an ecosystem. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. William Buck is the Curator of Bryophytes at the New York Botanical Garden.

WB: "Bryophytes are a group of organisms that include the mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. Mosses are amazing plants in the sense that they can occur in very wet to very dry habitats. They can completely dry out, shrivel down to almost nothing, and then, in some cases years later when they're re-hydrated, get wet again-they'll just come back to life. So, mosses, when they dry out, go into a sort of suspended animation and can stay there for indefinite periods of time, sometimes many years. And this is - if you're living in a desert, that's the adaptation you have to be able to do with. And then, when it gets a little rain, usually within a couple of hours, they're up and photosynthesizing and living again. There are examples of mosses that have been dried and in a herbarium for 50 years, and they've wetted them up and had them come back to life."

JM: The mosses ability to hold on to moisture plays a vital role in its environment.

WB: "Mosses have a number of important ecological values. Probably the most important is that when it rains, mosses absorb the moisture and much more slowly release it than do other kinds of plants and, therefore, maintain the humidity of the whole forest, allowing all the plants to be able to survive there. They also act as seedbeds for trees and other kinds of flowering plants, and they are home to a large number of invertebrates, various kinds of insects and worms and that sort of thing."

JM: We'll hear about mosses in future programs. Please visit our website a pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation. I'm Jim Metzner.