A scientist who specializes in the study of mosses, liverworts, and other bryophytes.
Bryologist combines 'bryo-' from Greek 'bryon' (moss) with '-logist' meaning 'one who studies.' The suffix '-logist' appears in hundreds of English scientific terms like biologist and geologist. Bryologists became formally recognized as a scientific specialty in the 19th century as botany diversified.
Bryologists are the forgotten heroes of botany—they study organisms that are 95% water and can survive frozen solid or completely desiccated. There are probably fewer than 1,000 professional bryologists in the world, but they guard knowledge about an entire kingdom's worth of life.
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