Jul 22, 2026 11:43 PM
https://www.sciencealert.com/moss-behave...-discovers
EXCERPTS: Mosses are some of the earliest plants that appeared in the fossil record, but they're anything but simple. A new study, published in Royal Society Open Science, reveals that moss cushions produce surprisingly complex electrical activity, with patterns that undulate across the velvety patch in dynamic waves.
The study's sole author, Andy Adamatzky, is actually a computer scientist, whose fascination with unconventional 'computing' systems like slime molds, crowds, and mycelium networks has now led him to a new subject: the humble moss, Brachythecium rutabulum.
"Plants and bryophytes display diverse forms of electrical activity, yet the organization of endogenous signals in mosses has received little attention," Adamatzky writes in his new paper. His findings suggest that "moss cushions behave as spatially distributed excitable systems potentially capable of coordinating and integrating electrical signals across both space and time."
Moss cushions are actually many individual clones of the same teensy tiny plant. [...] Some of the moss's electrical waves were rapid, while others undulated slowly. They tended to spread across the entire cushion rather than remaining confined to a particular region, and followed patterns across different timescales.
These findings suggest that "moss behaves as a dynamic, interconnected system rather than a collection of independent cells." (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS: Mosses are some of the earliest plants that appeared in the fossil record, but they're anything but simple. A new study, published in Royal Society Open Science, reveals that moss cushions produce surprisingly complex electrical activity, with patterns that undulate across the velvety patch in dynamic waves.
The study's sole author, Andy Adamatzky, is actually a computer scientist, whose fascination with unconventional 'computing' systems like slime molds, crowds, and mycelium networks has now led him to a new subject: the humble moss, Brachythecium rutabulum.
"Plants and bryophytes display diverse forms of electrical activity, yet the organization of endogenous signals in mosses has received little attention," Adamatzky writes in his new paper. His findings suggest that "moss cushions behave as spatially distributed excitable systems potentially capable of coordinating and integrating electrical signals across both space and time."
Moss cushions are actually many individual clones of the same teensy tiny plant. [...] Some of the moss's electrical waves were rapid, while others undulated slowly. They tended to spread across the entire cushion rather than remaining confined to a particular region, and followed patterns across different timescales.
These findings suggest that "moss behaves as a dynamic, interconnected system rather than a collection of independent cells." (MORE - details)