Creating mossarium ecosystems to learn about the strange intelligence of mosses for our Strange Intelligences Lab
In the last few months, Maggie B has been experimenting with growing mosses of different kinds inside a mossarium. The mosses are still being identified but were all gathered from her backyard or local neighbourhood and placed inside a vase.
Kim cut a perspex top for the vase and various ingredients, plus the mosses were used to fill it and generate a self supporting reality for the moss species placed inside.
The Process
Mossarium Recipe:
Find a suitable plastic or glass container with a lid—you can use a jar. I used vases with lids specially made (yikes, perspex is expensive!).
Then add the following:
– pebbles
– weedmatting
– soil mix (intuitively mixed peat moss, coconut fibre, potting mix, fine pumice)
– stones for decoration
– a light layer of moistened sphagnum moss
I then let all that settle with the lid on for a few days (after a mist or three of water)
Then
I harvested the moss from local locations and ensured it was clean (I didn’t wash it—that felt weird and is often an instruction in recipes online). I found a few worms and insects, so I let those go and just made sure it was as visible critter-free as possible.
The mossariums were left for a month in indirect, medium light – and were not touched.
Before and After One Month
A month later, and they are doing great!
I had a brief scare with some mould after I decided to brush the rocks with yoghurt to make the moss grow more artfully on them (a random idea that didn’t work).
The next step is identification.
(Thanks to Angela Rowe, Terra Bomba from our bioSignals project, and Alan Thomas of ThoTho for inspiration and ideas)
Image above at the start of the process>images below one month later
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This experiment is part of the Strange Intelligences Lab
