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Once upon a time, there was a tiny, neglected plant.
A plant capable of working wonders.
An ingenious and resilient plant.
Long underestimated.
It is a plant that excites the passions of the scientists
working to unveil its mysteries.
It grows everywhere on the planet.
It transcends the landscape.
And gives us a glimpse of surprising magical worlds.
This small organism tells a marvellous story about our world.
Mosses are essential to life on Earth,
and they have been reshaping our planet since the dawn of time.
In Japan, mosses are revered.
The Japanese look upon them
as Westerners might look upon a heavenly constellation,
with the same awe and wonder.
Here, the forces of nature,
such as the wind, the rivers,
animals, and moss
are venerated. They are careful not to disturb the plant
and let it cover sacred sites.
They care for the mosses with endless skill and patience.
They go out of their way to protect and contemplate the mosses.
Every detail is important.
Anything that might disturb or harm the moss is meticulously removed,
as if each sprig were a priceless treasure.
The garden at Kokedera,
also known as the Moss Temple,
is an extraordinary sanctuary.
It is home to more than 120 species of moss.
Unlike the complex Latin names used in Europe,
the Japanese give mosses more delicate, intuitive names
like Spiral Moss...
..Whip Moss...
..Shining Branch...
..White Hair...
..and Grandfather's Beard.
Mould Moss is very easy to locate.
All you have to do is bend down,
take a sniff,
and let yourself be guided by its characteristic odour.
HE SNIFFS
Other mosses give off the aroma of peppers, cucumbers or oysters.
In this temple, each sprig of moss
is treated like a precious jewel,
fragile and delicate.
But there are other, less hospitable places
where the mosses can show off their exceptional capacities for survival.
The volcanic highlands of Lakagigar in Iceland
reveal some of the superpowers of moss.
How did our frail little mosses
manage to invade these lunar landscapes scorched by lava flows?
In 1783, one of the most violent volcanic eruptions
of the last 10,000 years happened here.
Magnea Magnusdottir is an enthusiastic biologist.
She's studying the grey, velvety moss
that covers the surface of this area - the Racomitrium.
It has taken over two centuries
for nature to produce this fragile coat of moss.
60 centimetres thick,
it covers this vast, ten-metre-high lava field.
Over time, the moss has grown thicker.
It has created a fertile, stable topsoil
that allows flowering plants and shrubs to grow.
The moss is a pioneer plant.
It has taken hold where no-one expected it to -
in this harsh, inhospitable landscape.
To understand how that was possible,
we have to go back to a key moment in our planet's history.
450 million years ago, the oceans underwent an enormous upheaval.
Algae took advantage of the tidal ebb and flow to move onto the land,
gradually adapting and evolving into mosses.
Their spread provided a layer of soil over the volcanic rock.
These very first terrestrial plants
were one of the main sources of oxygen in the atmosphere,
enabling other forms of life to evolve and thrive.
Mosses have colonised nearly the entire surface of the Earth,
transforming an arid planet into a lush planet.
Mosses grow nearly everywhere on the Earth.
We have discovered close to 25,000 species.
The conditions in the gorges of the Toul-Goulic in Brittany
are ideal for mosses.
The light is filtered by leafy branches.
And it is always humid.
Moss grows everywhere.
Moss specialists, or bryologists,
come from near and far to study these mosses, or bryophytes.
Vincent Hugonnot is one of France's leading bryologists.
He never goes anywhere without his favourite tool.
Grasping the beauty of mosses
is first of all learning how to look at them.
Observing them reveals surprising and widely varying forms.
Because what bryologists like best is recognising and naming mosses,
detecting the rarest species and immersing themselves
in anatomical detail.
Close observation of the mosses
transforms them into lush jungles
inhabited by fantastic creatures.
An invaluable network of living beings which spread,
decompose and regulate the microflorae of the ground.
These miniature forests are home to crawling springtails,
curious hairy moss mites
and slimy roundworms.
If we look even more closely...
..we can make out these unusual micro shrimps, called rotifers,
and strange little eight-legged creatures
that browse on the surface of the mosses -
tardigrades, or water bears.
These amazing creatures are quite resourceful.
They can slow down their metabolism to withstand drought,
a fascinating adaptation that they share with mosses.
This heightened tolerance to drought and the moss' capacity to revive
when conditions become favourable again are major assets.
They allow mosses to withstand extreme conditions
better than any other plants,
even in the harshest environments.
A British ecologist came face-to-face with this phenomenon,
called reviviscence,
on an expedition to the South Pole to study global warming.
This is Peter Convey.
In 2014, he revived a moss plant embedded in the frozen soil.
His discovery sent a shock wave through the scientific community.
What we were trying to do was to sample a core
through one of these deep peat banks.
So several cores were taken
to be analysed for various chemicals
that are indicators of climate.
But we took an extra core
simply because we wanted to analyse
the biological properties
of the core itself.
So, not the chemistry, not the climate reconstruction.
We simply wanted to see, was there any life within the core itself?
We wrap it up carefully and cleanly.
We pack it into boxes and we carry it
round about an hour and a half's walk back to the station
where we can put it in freezers, and that's all we do with it.
On the station, we store them in freezers
until we can get them back to the UK.
Peter Convey came to analyse the soil chemistry.
This moss sample was not the primary focus of his expedition.
But because he was interested in the characteristics of bryophytes,
his attention was drawn to the exceptional thickness
of the moss sample he took.
We have a very clear clue that these moss banks are old,
for the very simple reason that in the Antarctic
mosses grow about half a centimetre a year.
So if you've got a two-metre-thick moss bank,
you've got many centuries of moss at the bottom,
you know it's going to be old. The only way to test how old it is
is to use radiocarbon dating.
So the key thing, if we know we've got a metre of moss -
we had a metre and a half of the moss in this core -
we know that the bottom of that is many centuries old.
So the next question was to find out how many centuries old.
The thawed out moss immediately showed signs of life,
and thanks to carbon-14 dating, Peter made a remarkable discovery.
He had revived a 1,500-year-old moss.
It was around when the Roman Empire was on the decline.
I was rather excited! I mean, that really...
It was a brand-new discovery.
This moss was happily growing away on Signy Island
a millennia and a half before we discovered Antarctica.
It's a step change in our understanding
of how long something can survive for. It obviously was alive,
we haven't created life, but we've stimulated it back into growth
and it's by far the oldest one I'm aware of that that's happened to.
Could it be that mosses have discovered
the secret of immortality?
What is for certain is that they are still full of mysteries.
And what about these colonies of moss called glacier mice?
They can survive on ice.
Their most surprising characteristic is not their tolerance for cold,
but their capacity to move two and a half centimetres a day.
Neither wind nor gravity explain this phenomenon.
So how do they do it?
One explanation is that our glacier mouse
protects the ice beneath it from the sun.
When the ice around it melts,
the moss is left perched on a little ice island
it has protected from the sun's ultraviolet rays.
It eventually tips over and the process starts again,
slowly transforming the moss into a rolling ball.
So much for the old saying
a rolling stone gathers no moss.
Mosses are discreet, but grow all over the world.
They can cope with extreme temperature swings
ranging from -40 to +70 degrees Celsius.
Bryophytes include mosses that can survive
in the hot springs in Iceland.
Like this moss, the Solenostoma,
that clings to rocks in scorching Icelandic rivers.
Bryophytes are one of the organisms most capable of adapting
to climate change.
How can a plant be so resilient?
How has it managed to grow everywhere on the planet?
What is it secret?
The moss' extreme resilience lies in its simplicity.
It is an organism that has no flowers, no seeds and no roots.
The moss does not draw the nutriments it needs from a soil,
but from direct contact with air and water.
THUNDER RUMBLES
A few drops of water
are enough to trigger the moss' reproductive cycle.
Water activates the spermatozoids,
which swim to the female gamete.
Fertilisation takes place.
And a fairy-like ballet begins.
After three weeks, the miraculous cycle of life gets under way.
Long filaments rise towards the sky.
They are topped by small pods which swell and open.
They explode, releasing thousands of spores, like a firework display,
giving life to a new generation of baby mosses.
Mosses have retained features
inherited from their aquatic origins.
As they evolved,
they survived on a planet with no atmosphere,
bombarded by the radiation from the sun and space.
This could help explain their resistance to the radioactivity
in the contamination zone around Fukushima in Japan.
Professor Masaki Shimamura
is the director of the Bryological Society of Japan.
He has been studying the impact of the nuclear catastrophe on mosses.
BEEPING
This bioaccumulation by the mosses
has led Professor Shimamura to conclude
that the forests and dams are the most contaminated areas.
Rainwater soaks down to the bottom of the valley,
where record levels of radioactivity can be observed.
The radioactivity is then captured by the mosses.
Lacking the protective cuticle found on the surface of most plant leaves,
the water is absorbed into the interior of the moss,
which then stores the contaminants.
Bryophytes are very sensitive
and respond quickly to environmental changes.
BEEPING
Mosses are reliable early warning systems which allow us to measure
the quantity of radioactive pollution in contamination zones.
If their DNA is damaged by pollutants,
they continue to develop, even after a nuclear catastrophe.
But that is not all.
Mosses can also auto-regenerate
from a piece of stem or a damaged leaf.
This miracle is possible thanks to a cell only found in ferns, algae
and moss, which is capable of reprogramming itself very quickly,
like a stem cell.
Like the heads of the mythical Hydra,
each tiny, ripped off fragment of moss
can give birth to multiple autonomous clones.
A major asset when it comes to expanding
and conquering new territories.
But this depends on our little moss encountering no new pollutants.
Otherwise, it can become very vulnerable, like here in Iceland,
near this geothermal plant
that uses volcanic energy to heat the capital Reykjavik.
To withstand the poisonous Gaussian plumes, the mosses need help.
Magnea has come to their rescue with an original recipe.
It took her several years to perfect it.
First, pick sprigs of moss,
taking care not to leave any holes.
Place the moss in a container
and carefully disentangle it.
Roughly cut the moss.
A garden strimmer may be used.
Pour in gallon after gallon of fermented milk
and stir thoroughly
until you have a unique moss soup.
INDISTINCT CHATTER
The mixture is transported to the site of the damage
and applied by hand.
A milky crust develops,
holding the chopped sprigs in place,
and they rapidly multiply.
Thanks to Magnea's magic potion...
..and the capacity of the moss to regenerate,
it will take less than two years to restore this site.
BIRDS TWEET
Iceland is a sanctuary for nature.
The country boasts some strange species of moss.
One of them even breathes.
But is it actually a moss?
The golden plover has a very special relationship with the mosses
that grow on the Icelandic heath.
This bird lays its eggs in the ground
in a little hollow dug by the male.
At birth, the chicks' down mimics the moss and its environment.
The golden plovers' adult plumage is dynamic,
but the chicks remain carefully camouflaged on the heath.
In Vietnam, the mimicry is even more marked in the mossy frog.
There are no soft, velvety feathers here,
but a slimy, knobbled epidermis.
When in danger, this amphibian freezes
and imitates a bryophyte to hide from its predators.
The fox is also a valued friend to a certain species of moss
that only grow on fox excrement.
Tetraplodon belongs to one of the most elegant moss families on Earth,
but has a taste for faeces and putrefaction.
It is also capable of olfactive mimicry,
giving off a perfect imitation of fox excrement odour...
..to attract coprophagic flies.
This is an effective collaboration with the insect,
allowing the moss to spread its spores by proxy into the wild.
A unique feature amongst mosses
and a fine example of collaboration
and co-evolution between species.
It reveals an aptitude in mosses to adapt in order to survive...
..provided they do not run into any obstacles.
Humans are hindering the spread of mosses
and have declared war on them.
In many countries,
they are considered parasitic plants
associated with mould and decay.
They eliminate the mosses with chemical herbicides,
which are also toxic for the wider environment and even for humans.
A researcher at the Sorbonne University in Paris
may have found a formula that could change this approach.
Emmanuel Baudouin is working on a patent for a natural herbicide.
The adventure began in 2017 when Bastien Nay, a chemist,
asked Emmanuel Baudouin to work with him
on a naturally occurring molecule - Radulanin A.
It comes from Radula, a common moss found in our forests.
They discovered that this molecule
possesses amazing herbicidal properties.
Emmanuel Baudouin chose a tiny flowering plant
as a subject for his experiment.
Thale cress. It is considered a weed.
He asked his team to mix the Radulanin molecule from the moss
with the samples of thale cress in a liquid solution.
The objective of the experiment was to test the herbicidal properties
of Radulanin A on the cress plant.
It is an ironic twist that this moss
could someday contribute to the elimination of other mosses.
Even though we cannot explain why,
it possesses the same devastating capacities as glyphosate.
Mosses, long overlooked by science,
are gradually yielding up their secrets,
and new fields of exploration are opening up for researchers.
On the majestic, wild Japanese island of Yakushima,
the mosses communicate with the trees.
The mountain is covered by a forest of 1,000-year-old trees,
and is home to the yakusugi...
..giant cedar trees which are considered sacred.
It is also a realm of mosses.
A pilgrimage site for bryologists from all over the world.
In this fairy tale undergrowth inhabited by deer and macaques...
..the mosses absorb considerable quantities of water
which they redistribute to the roots of the tall trees.
The thousands of species of moss thriving here
still have many secrets to reveal.
Some protect the giant cedar trees from pathogenic bacteria
thanks to their antibacterial properties.
Like guardians,
they have a considerable effect on the habitat that they colonise.
This antibacterial action shows just how much science could learn
from these mosses in the search for new medicines.
These tiny plants, too long overlooked,
could play a pivotal role in unexpected fields of science.
In one of Europe's oldest observatories in Copenhagen,
astrophysicist Jophiel Wiis
and his colleagues on the SpaceMoss programme
have genetically modified a moss.
His goal is to study the moss' capacity to survive
in the hostile environment on Mars.
When you do space travel,
every kilo that you bring into orbit
or to another planet is immensely expensive.
And just the medicine alone for a three-year journey
where you want to make sure that people are healthy
and come back safe, you need so much medicine,
so much food, so much equipment and supplies, so much of everything.
And if we can make a moss that is capable of producing
certain types of medicine, then you just have to bring a little patch
of the moss that can produce penicillin
or whatever compound you're after.
In the near future, moss could produce medicine
that astronauts could cultivate on Mars.
On the condition, of course, that Wiis' genetically modified moss
survives the Martian environment.
So how can the moss' resistance be tested on Earth?
The members of the SpaceMoss laboratory
at the National Institute of Copenhagen came up with a solution.
They designed a machine
that artificially reproduces the Martian environment.
On Mars you need something that's very, very harsh and resilient.
Mosses can survive a lot of extreme situations.
They don't grow very fast, but...
..they just stick around when other things die.
And that's something you need if you want to go to space.
OK, so we have the moss.
And the Mars Chamber.
And then we have the sluice here.
Which is the entrance to the Mars volume.
And in here we can place the moss...in the sluice.
Then we can go over here.
The sluice port...
Get the moss into the main chamber.
Close up the sluice port again, all the way.
When the airlock closes,
the chamber becomes completely airtight.
The moss then experiences a simulation
of extreme atmospheric conditions on Mars.
Pump in a lot of CO2 in order to simulate the Martian atmosphere.
That's over here.
And on...
That creates a vacuum inside of the tiny chamber.
So we have the Martian atmosphere in the whole chamber
and then we have a tiny volume where you also have the pressure,
or the lack of pressure.
That's the UV lamp turning on. And then we have a Martian atmosphere.
Inside the chamber, we have the Martian pressure,
the Martian radiation, the temperature,
and if we also want Martian soil and perchlorates,
we can put it under the sample that we put into the chamber.
It is as if Jophiel's moss has been transported 70 million kilometres,
and he can observe all the effects of the Martian environment
on the moss plant.
And that's a very good simulation of Mars.
Jophiel's modified moss survive temperature swings found on Mars,
which can range from +25 degrees
to -120 degrees Celsius in a single night.
The first stage of the research has been completed.
NASA is interested in the SpaceMoss programme
and has contacted the laboratory.
Jophiel is a candidate to join the European Space Agency
and one day hopes to test his mosses in outer space.
So we think of the Earth as the blue planet
and we think of Mars as the red planet.
But I think it would be so cool if, in hundreds of years,
we would be looking up at Mars and thinking about it
as the green planet, because mosses had covered the entire surface.
It may or may not happen, but I think it would be awesome.
But to me, personally, I think travelling into space
and going to other planets
and becoming a multiplanetary species is just...
..such a romantic idea.
For Jophiel, mosses might help open doors to interplanetary travel.
These were the first plants to successfully colonise our planet.
Could this scenario repeat itself elsewhere?
In the course of evolution, mosses have acquired the capacity
to resist extreme temperatures, pollution and radiation.
Understanding their versatility and resistance
could lead us towards future discoveries
and allow us to imagine new scientific perspectives.
These magical mosses work wonders
and we are only beginning to understand their secrets.