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Life in Flux

@life-in-flux

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vinceaddams
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schistostegapennata
bansheet asked:

can you talk about moss poaching i'm actually really curious

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schistostegapennata answered:

How can I refuse! Absolutely!!! It sounds kind of ridiculous, but it's actually very sad.

So, let's start off with some numbers. Every year, the moss black market is estimated to garner up to $165 million for trafficking approximately 82 million pounds of moss.

I cannot even wrap my mind around how much moss that is.

You might ask, why does moss poaching exist and why is it so lucrative? Well, the quality that has made mosses the prey of an illegal trade is simply their aesthetic appeal. Soft, velvety, and moist, mosses are extremely pleasant to the touch and calming to look at. Some people are willing to pay large amounts of money to collect them and put them in private gardens. However, most of the mosses that move in this underground black market are actually sold to companies/wholesalers for use in potting/gardening soil, plant nurseries, decor, and as craft materials. The majority of the preserved mosses in your run-of-the-mill chain craft store, planters, floral wreaths, or very-much-dead living wall decorations are gathered illegally, bleached to death, and then dyed green. This goes for a lot of prepackaged peat moss and soil mix blends as well.

Even though it is illegal to gather moss in public places (in the US, at least), people still harvest it. Why? Probably because there's a fair amount of money to be made and the consequences are very rarely enforced, and when they are, they are quite light--usually a $50 fine at worst if you're caught. Most of this black market moss is actually poached from the national park system, with Appalachia and the Pacific Northwest usually being the hardest hit regions.

Mosses play vital roles in many ecosystems, provide homes for threatened species, regulate water distribution in forests, and help with erosion, so their loss is a terrible blow. Additionally, moving such large quantities of mosses from one location to another may spread unwanted, invasive hitchhikers, like insects that lay their eggs in the plants, or even seeds and spores.

I'll end on this thought:

It can take 20 years for a small patch of moss removed from a fallen tree to grow back with the right moisture conditions.

How long would it take to regrow 82 million pounds?

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schistostegapennata

You might be okay in this case, a lot of places scrape the moss off if it's growing on a building! If that's the case, you'd probably be doing the moss a favor since it'd probably get thrown out otherwise.

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riley1cannon

Ah, so nice when you get confirmation that a book you’re reading is exactly what you think it is: Fortune Favors the Dead.

I’ve been reading this and thinking: This is a Nero Wolfe & Archie Goodwin pastiche. Sort of. No weird orchid obession, no creepy gourmet food, Lillian Pentecost isn’t obese but she is living with MS and has a glass eye, and Will Parker’s snappy patter is much on a par with Archie’s, and then the office and the yellow, and the exchanges between Lillian and Will… 

So yay, if other people see it too it must be true. ;)

Anyway, the book stands on its own quite nicely. I’m fifteen chapters in and haven’t figured out whodunnit yet, so that’s good. If you have never read a Nero Wolfe mystery you will be fine. The pastiche plays like a kind of Easter Egg for the Nero and Archie fans out there, but in no way obscures anything.

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lgbtqreads

Fave Five: Queer Historical Mysteries

Fave Five: Queer Historical Mysteries

Dead, Dead Girls by Nekesa Afia Proper English by KJ Charles The Savage Kind by John Cooperhaver Hither, Page by Cat Sebastian Fortune Favors the Dead by Stephen Spotswood Bonus: Coming March 15th, Murder on Monte Vista by David S. Pederson, and October 18th, Lavender House by Lev A.C. Rosen

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strongermonster
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nymla

Just two pumpkins, having a good time 🎃🎃 Stoneware ceramics. [Sold] If you want to be notified of my shop updates you can sign up to my email list here.

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pincushionsam
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ratatoskrr

Decrease the kraken!

Here's my embroidered/painted/knitted octopus that's going on the back of the jeans jacket I'm sewing. The original embroidery pattern is by Hook Line Tinker, I just added some extra knitting to the pattern.

By now I've finished all the embroidery for the jacket and started sewing it together! It's all sea-themed

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pincushionsam
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idembroiderthat
Last- but not least- ghost up: Ghost Pigeon. They didn’t have a lot of lines or screentime, but their comedic timing was impeccable and they left an indelible mark on the show.
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ltwilliammowett

“Trafalgar - 6.50 a.m.”

The British Fleet starts its approach soon after first light: one of a set of four superb Trafalgar images created in 1875 by the London-based French painter Auguste Ballin.

- AUGUSTE BALLIN (French, 1842 - c. 1912)- 

Source: marineartists.co.uk
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ltwilliammowett

An early 17th century naval action in the long history of warfare between Spain and the Netherlands, by Oswald Walters Brierly (1817-1894)

Source: bonhams.com