評論
打印
You might not think there would be that many people in the world prepared to devote lifetimes to the study of something so inescapably low key, but in fact moss people number in the hundreds and they feel very strongly about their subject. "Oh, yes," Ellis told me, "the meetings can get very lively at times."
你或許會認為，世界上不會有多少人愿意花畢生的心血來研究那個不起眼兒的東西，但實際上研究苔蘚的有好幾百人，他們對自己的課題懷有強烈的感情。“哦，是的，”埃利斯對我說，“會議往往開得還很活躍。”
I asked him for an example of controversy.
我請他舉個有爭議的例子。
Well, here's one inflicted on us by one of your countrymen, he said, smiling lightly, and opened a hefty reference work containing illustrations of mosses whose most notable characteristic to the uninstructed eye was their uncanny similarity one to another. "That," he said, tapping a moss, "used to be one genus, Drepanocladus. Now it's been reorganized into three: Drepanocladus, Wamstorfia, and Hamatacoulis."
“哎呀，這兒就有一個，是你的一位同胞挑起來的。”他微微一笑，翻開一本厚重的參考書，里面包含幾幅苔蘚的插圖。在外行人看來，這些苔蘚最醒目的特點是彼此看上去都差不多。“那個，”他指了指一種苔蘚說，“它們原本是一個屬，鐮刀蘚屬。現在重新分成了三個屬：鐮刀蘚屬、Warnstorfia和Hamatacoulis。”
And did that lead to blows? I asked perhaps a touch hopefully.
“大家有沒有因此動手打起來？”我問，也許還真的懷著一絲希望。
Well, it made sense. It made perfect sense. But it meant a lot of reordering of collections and it put all the books out of date for a time, so there was a bit of, you know, grumbling.
“哎呀，這是很有道理的。完全有道理的。但是，這意味著要花很多時間來重新整理收藏品，那些書也一度過了時，因此大家有一點牢騷，你是知道的。”
Mosses offer mysteries as well, he told me. One famous case—famous to moss people anyway—involved a retiring type called Hyophila stanfordensis, which was discovered on the campus of Stanford University in California and later also found growing beside a path in Cornwall, on the southwest tip of England, but has never been encountered anywhere in between. How it came to exist in two such unconnected locations is anybody's guess. "It's now known as Hennediella stanfordensis," Ellis said. "Another revision."
他對我說，苔蘚也有好多謎。有個著名的例子——反正對于研究苔蘚的人來說是很著名的——有一種離群索居的苔蘚，名叫斯坦福濕地蘚，是在加利福尼亞州的斯坦福大學校園里發現的，后來又發現它生長在英國康沃爾半島的一條小路邊，但在中間的哪兒也沒有遇到過。它怎么會存在于兩個天各一方的地方，這是個謎。“現在，它被稱為斯坦福棕色蘚。”埃利斯說，“又是一次修正。”
We nodded thoughtfully.
我們若有所思地點了點頭。
