Consider the Moss. When it is not honored with attention and curiosity, it appears to be simply a green fuzz that grows upon damp surfaces. If you do not know the ways of the plants, you could be tempted to understand moss as an unhealthful or infectious substance similar to mold, even to buy moss-killing poisons for the moss in your lawn. What a tragedy, to destroy what you do not understand!
A moss is simply a plant of the ancient phylum Bryophyta, in which a fantastical variety of plants exists. Look closely—what’s this? They are no longer simple green fuzz to the eye!
Some form tiny puffs, others sprawling branches, some vinelike runners, feathery plumes or plump fingers, some scraggy tufts like hair, and some plush, mounding masses. Some mosses in fact have tiny leaves, round or pointed, arranged in rows or in poofy rosettes. Some mosses look like velveted antlers, others crackling fireworks, others the tails of cats, others the toes of frogs. Some mosses creep along, others pile up, still others sprawl in orderly lines, some cover a boulder in luxurious pelts, and yet another will cling unevenly in scruffy little bits wherever it can scrape by.
Though mosses grow upon trees sometimes, they do the trees no harm; they are in fact very beneficial to the entire plant community. They protect the land from becoming dried out and eroded, regulate the temperature of the other plants’ roots, and provide a lush habitat for little creatures like tardigrades. Importantly for us, they also help carbon dioxide in the air become stored in the soil.
This is how I feel about Joshua Trees. They and avocado trees produce fruit meant to be eaten and dispersed by giant ground sloths. Without them, the Joshua Trees’ range has shrunk by 90%.
(my own photos)
Not only they, but the entire Mojave ecosystem is still struggling to adapt since the loss of ground sloth dung. their chief fertilizer.
Many, many trees and plants in the Americas have widely-spaced, extremely long thorns that do nothing to discourage deer eating their leaves, but would’ve penetrated the fur of ground sloths and mammoths. Likewise, if you’ve observed a tree that drops baseball or softball-sized fruit which lies on the ground and rots, like Osage Oranges, which were great for playing catch at my school, chances are they were ground sloth or mammoth chow.
You can read about various orphaned plants and trees missing their megafauna in this poignant post:
