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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."
你或许会认为，世界上不会有多少人愿意花毕生的心血来研究那个不起眼儿的东西，但实际上研究苔藓的有好几百人，他们对自己的课题怀有强烈的感情。“哦，是的，”埃利斯对我说，“会议往往开得还很活跃。”
I asked him for an example of controversy.
我请他举个有争议的例子。
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，这儿就有一个，是你的一位同胞挑起来的。”他微微一笑，翻开一本厚重的参考书，里面包含几幅苔藓的插图。在外行人看来，这些苔藓最醒目的特点是彼此看上去都差不多。“那个，”他指了指一种苔藓说，“它们原本是一个属，镰刀藓属。现在重新分成了三个属：镰刀藓属、Warnstorfia和Hamatacoulis。”
And did that lead to blows? I asked perhaps a touch hopefully.
“大家有没有因此动手打起来？”我问，也许还真的怀着一丝希望。
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 But it meant a lot of reordering of collections and it put all the books out of date for a time, so there was a bit of, you know, grumbling.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，这是很有道理的。完全有道理的。但是，这意味着要花很多时间来重新整理收藏品，那些书也一度过了时，因此大家有一点牢骚，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."
他对我说，苔藓也有好多谜。有个著名的例子——反正对于研究苔藓的人来说是很著名的——有一种离群索居的苔藓，名叫斯坦福湿地藓，是在加利福尼亚州的斯坦福大学校园里发现的，后来又发现它生长在英国康沃尔半岛的一条小路边，但在中间的哪儿也没有遇到过。它怎么会存在于两个天各一方的地方，这是个谜。“现在，它被称为斯坦福棕色藓。”埃利斯说，“又是一次修正。”
We nodded thoughtfully.
我们若有所思地点了点头。
