A Book-Lover’s Tribute to
Mosses of Eastern North America

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved books, and still do. There’s nothing like a great book to relax with and learn from. Now forty years after the publication of Mosses of Eastern North America, by Howard A. Crum and Lewis E. Anderson, it seems like a good time to reflect on one of my favorites.

Along in the 1980s, Janet and I began volunteering at The Nature Conservancy’s Kitty Todd Preserve in the Oak Openings region of northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan. We started hiking around and learning the plants of the area. Janet remembered seeing small plants with tiny umbrellas during her field botany class at Bowling Green. The more we looked at the small plants, the more interesting they became.

So what to do but go to the Toledo Public Library and find a good book! Of the few choices, the best seemed to be the older Mosses with a Hand Lens and the much newer How To Know the Mosses and Liverworts. I chose the newer. Having no experience with mosses or dichotomous keys, it was slow going. I tried identifying a specimen, but kept coming to a dead-end of two Florida mosses. Further effort led to Schwetschkeopsis fabronia, but it was hard to tell if that was correct. No fault of the keys, of course, just the user.

The next step was to visit the Bowling Green State University library to look for other books. There were a lot more choices, but after a few minutes of looking through Mosses of Eastern North America, I knew I had to have it, despite the daunting technical characteristics and the even more daunting (to this day) Conspectus of Taxa. Somehow the book just drew me in, made me optimistic, gave me confidence and was just fun to read. I checked it out seven times and then bought it for the huge sum of $140, far more than I’d ever paid for a book, but I knew it was worth it. After many hours of enjoyable reading and thumbing through the glossary and pictures, the mystery moss turned out to be not a Florida endemic, but Amblystegium varium. Since then, I’ve never tired of looking through my now well-worn, taped-together volumes.

Taxonomists have been busy in the last forty years, so newer books are a must. But as valuable and necessary as they are, none has given me such enjoyment or inspiration.

A few years back, I had a revelation. We’d been on a few hikes with the Michigan Botanical Club, but didn’t know anyone very well. I got to chatting with Chris Anderson, and somehow the subject turned to Mosses of Eastern North America. It turns out that Chris was a colleague of Dr. Crum at the University of Michigan Herbarium. She said that Howard put great effort into his writing, carefully choosing his words. She said it was really important to him. It struck me then why I like the book so much — it is the outstanding writing. The last paragraph of the genus descriptions is especially helpful and often entertaining. The same is true for the discussions at the end of each species. I never tire of rereading them. I would’ve never known that Vesicularia is “a bad genus consisting of bad species”, or that Hypnum lindbergii “was named for Sextus Otto Lindberg, who had only recently given it two illegal names…” I could give other examples from almost any page.

So thank you, Drs. Crum and Anderson, for sharing your knowledge and experience, and for taking such pains to present it all to us so well. I’ve learned so much and enjoyed every minute of it.

-Jim Toppin