If you've ever tried to scrape moss off your roof or keep it from invading your lawn, you'd assume it'd be easy to grow.
A few Northwest scientists are exploring "moss farming" as an alternative to stripping moss out of wet-side forests. But that's proving curiously tricky.
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They say a rolling stone gathers no moss. But maybe eighth graders can.
Teacher: "We've got a special presentation today. This is Dr. Nalini Nadkarni."
Nadkarni is a professor at the Evergreen State College.
Scientists such as her typically turn to grad students when they need extra hands for an experiment. But she likes to add ideas from lay people.
So lately, her helpers include minimum-security prisoners and this science class at Griffin Middle School near Olympia.
Nalini Nadkarni: "What you guys are going to be doing -- what I'm going to be talking about today -- is about learning how to grow mosses so that people won't have to take them out of the forest, but instead can grow them for florists and other people who want to use them."
The eighth graders have pots of fluffy moss on their lab benches, the kind of moss you've probably seen in floral baskets, planters, and craft stores.
Students like Dana and Dylan will design experiments to see if moss can be farmed.
Dana: "Like how much water to put in and like where you put them."
Dylan: "I'm thinking of trying putting different chemicals or food in the water, see if it make them grow better. That's what I want to test out."
These experiments are not just kid science. Botanists believe that wild moss is being harvested at unsustainable levels to supply the floral industry.
Oregon State University's Pat Muir made the first attempt at quantifying how much moss is being gathered in the Pacific Northwest.
She says it's more than anyone thought.
Pat Muir: "Millions of dry pounds. We talking probably several thousand semi-trucks full per year of dry moss."
But it's only moss. Who cares?
The thick green mats took decades to grow says Muir on a walk through OSU's experimental forest outside Corvallis. On this drippy day, she notes the moss probably has an important function holding water. Insects hide under the woolly forest cloak.
Pat Muir: "Birds use moss for nesting material."
Harvesters tell her the moss regrows real fast -- five or ten years -- no problem. But Muir doubts it.
Pat Muir: "The regrowth rate is much slower than people thought. People like you who are worried about moss in your lawn and moss on your roof think, 'Oh, man. Moss grows so fast.' And in a sense, one could say I guess it grows kind of fast. But not very fast when you're looking at return times of five years, for example. You need to let it regrow much longer than that."
Northwest national forests are ratcheting back the legal harvest and are on the watchout for poaching until a sustainable harvest rate can be established.
Which brings us back to whether moss can be "farmed." So far, Nalini Nadkarni has found the primitive plant rather tricky to grow.
Nalini Nadkarni: "You know, I get these moss blobs and I think, 'Oh, look at this dicranum. It's just so gorgeous and so vibrant.' And then I take it inside. After a month or two or three, it's not looking so good."
Nadkarni says lots of mysteries must be solved before she gets to the fundamental question whether the slow-growing plant can be farmed on a commercial scale at a profit.
Meanwhile, her research dollars are dwindling.Oregon Public Broadcasting News
