I SEE FIELDS OF GREEN

Masses were among the first plants to make landfall – at least 400 million years ago. They sequestered so much carbon dioxide, they caused the first Ice Age and gave Earth its first breath of fresh, clean air.

Soft and absorbent, the first sponges, baby nappies and bandages were made of moss. The oldest gunpowder in the West was made from moss spores.

Sphagnum palustre is found throughout the northern hemisphere, but the moss in Hawaii appears to reproduce only through cloning, which it seems to have done for the past 50 000 years.

Moss is ubiquitous, useful, and even edible; it's most famously served at Noma, the Danish restaurant often hailed as the world's best.

And then there's Gert