The Hidden Language of Moss and Lichen

Before the forests rose, before flowers brightened the land, before seeds learned to drift on the wind, there was moss. Then came lichen, a marriage of fungus and alga so improbable it still puzzles scientists. Together they crept over bare stone, dissolving it into soil, catching water, making the first green fabric on land. Half a billion years later, they are still at it, turning granite into gardens, logs into nurseries, air into life. Their work is so quiet it almost disappears into the background, and yet without them nothing taller would stand.

Walk into any forest and they are already underfoot and overhead, covering logs in green velvet, painting bark with silver crusts, dangling from branches in shaggy beards. They do not confine themselves to wilderness either. They climb city walls, creep across sidewalks, colonize rooftops. They are not fussy. Where there is stone, wood, moisture, or air, they settle in. That ordinariness is what makes them so easy to overlook. A cedar draped in moss may stop you, but the thin smear of lichen on a fencepost rarely does. Both, however, are carrying out the same patient labor that shaped this planet long before anyone came along to admire it.

“Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, it emerges from the intricate dance of relationships that bind the living world.” - The Forest Unseen

Moss has a knack for water. Without roots, it drinks directly from air and rainfall, soaking up moisture like a sponge and holding it far longer than soil alone could. A square meter of sphagnum moss can hold liters of water, releasing it gradually into creeks and rivers. Entire salmon runs depend on this slow release, though you will not find moss on conservation posters. Peel back a cushion in mid-summer and you can still find it damp underneath, as if the plant is carrying a memory of winter rain. In northern bogs, moss stores so much carbon that peatlands now act as one of Earth’s largest carbon vaults, holding more than forests and almost rivaling fossil reserves. Disturb those bogs and carbon that took millennia to store escapes in a rush, a reminder that even softness can guard enormous strength.

“To study lichens is to study the language of patience, where millimeters can mean decades.” - Lichens of North America

Lichen carries another set of skills. By excreting mild acids, they digest stone grain by grain, freeing minerals that will later feed plants. Some trap nitrogen from the air, fertilizing soils that would otherwise starve. Their work is geological in scale and glacial in pace. On alpine cliffs you can find colonies older than the countries we live in, maps painted in orange, gray, and green across stone. A patch the size of your hand may have been growing since before your family line had a name. In boreal forests, caribou and reindeer survive winters by grazing on lichens blanketing the ground. They are simultaneously chemists, farmers, and forage. Even in space they hold on. Experiments have strapped them to the outside of satellites, exposing them to vacuum and radiation, and still they return alive. They are teachers of survival, though their survival is not guaranteed. A few months of sulfur dioxide pollution can erase species that withstood ice ages. A decade of warming can shrink ranges that once stretched across continents.

I remember crouching beside a moss-covered log after days of rain, the spore capsules shining as if lit from within. Around them, tiny ferns sprouted, insects moved in damp corridors, seedlings rooted in their sponge. The log itself was halfway gone, dissolving into soil, yet in that decay was new growth in every direction. Impermanence did not feel like a loss. It felt like continuity. The language was clear: nothing ends alone, everything becomes something else.

“What else can you offer the earth, which has everything? What else can you give but something of yourself?” - Robin Wall Kimmerer

Indigenous peoples have long understood their gifts. Sphagnum moss was gathered for bedding and diapers, prized for its absorbency and antiseptic qualities. In times of war, soldiers packed wounds with it when cotton was scarce, its acidity keeping infections at bay. Lichens colored wool and cloth, brewed into teas and poultices, medicine before microscopes proved their chemistry. In Haida stories from the Northwest Coast, moss was said to hold ancestral memory on cedar trunks. In Norse imagination, the great world tree Yggdrasil was pictured cloaked in moss and lichen, endurance draped over endurance. In Japan, moss gardens are still tended as living metaphors of patience and impermanence, velvet green writing time across stone.

Western Washington is so generous with rain that moss has claimed nearly every surface short of your toothbrush. Roof shingles grow green fur, sidewalks sprout fuzz, and fence posts wear lichen badges like they’ve joined some ancient guild. You don’t have to travel far to see them, a short walk in your own neighborhood might do. Still, a few trails show their handiwork on a scale that can stop you in your tracks.

Hoh Rain Forest (Olympic National Park)

A cathedral of Sitka spruce and bigleaf maple where moss pours from branches like fabric. The Hall of Mosses loop is short, but every step feels like stepping inside the green architecture moss has built.

Lake Serene and Bridal Veil Falls (Central Cascades)

A steep climb that leads to granite slabs above the lake, often softened by moss and bordered with lichen-scrawled boulders. Sit long enough at the “lunch counter” rocks and you’ll see how these small beings anchor even the sheerest terrain.

North Fork Sauk to White Pass (Glacier Peak Wilderness)

Climbing through old growth, moss drapes every trunk and stone, a reminder that this forest is as much carpeted below as it is towering above. Higher up, lichen paints the alpine rocks in bright rust and silver, writing its slow story across centuries.

Suggested Reading

The Forest Unseen by David Haskell

A year spent observing a single square meter of forest floor becomes an exploration of biology, beauty, and connection. Haskell shows how even the smallest patches of moss and lichen hold entire worlds, and how attention itself is a form of reverence.

Lichens of North America by Irwin M. Brodo, Sylvia Sharnoff, and Stephen Sharnoff

Part field guide, part art book, part encyclopedia, this monumental work reveals the staggering diversity and ecological importance of lichens, turning what many see as stains on stone into living landscapes.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

A blend of Indigenous wisdom and scientific insight, this book explores reciprocity with the natural world. Kimmerer reminds us that noticing and gratitude are not luxuries but responsibilities.

Moss and lichen are the green handwriting across cedar trunks, the gray script on stone, the velvet that makes decay into nursery. To walk past them is easy. To notice them is to be changed.

Happy Trails!