Mossin’ Annie

The ancient Latin writer who authored the proverb “A rolling stone gathers no moss” surely never met anyone like Annie Martin. A nonstop dynamo about her life’s passion, Martin gathers mosses with permission at every opportunity in her beloved Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina.

These opportunities occur as rescues that she says “drive my spirit, because otherwise the mosses will be destroyed.” Her rescue sites range from the typical tourist destination to the dangerous to the bizarre. There was the time a state forest ranger called to say a parking lot was going in and asked, “Would you like to collect the moss first?” (“Yes, sir! Thank you very much.”) She’s peeled moss off asphalt as drivers whizzed by, leaving her literally in their dust. (“That wouldn’t be spiritually invigorating to most people, but to me it was!”) And there have been many times she’s asked a home-owner, “Excuse me, but could I climb on your roof and collect the moss that’s growing there?” (“I’m just nervy enough to ask!”)

Meet Mossin’ Annie, a folk hero to Southern native-plant enthusiasts and a self-taught expert in perhaps the most taken-for-granted niche in the plant kingdom: moss. With no scientific education beyond elementary school, she left a media production career in 2008 with the daunting goal of turning a childhood fascination with bryophytes—the planet’s oldest and perhaps most obscure land plant group — into a profession and a business, Mountain Moss Enterprises. Operating from a mossery near downtown Brevard, North Carolina, and