gos-uh-mer | /ˈgɒs ə mər/
Gossamer is spider silk, the ultrafine strands of which are almost invisible unless beaded with dew, dusty, or floating languidly through the air backlit by a low sun. It derives from the Middle English gosesomer, gossomer, or gossummer – all meaning goose summer. This rather odd etymology stems from the eating of roast goose being associated with late summer and early autumn. The Swedes call it sommartråd (summer thread). In Germany, it’s altweibersommer (old woman’s summer) – the strands of untethered silk being rather unkindly compared to hairs shed by old women. In modern English, gossamer has also become an umbrella term for extremely fine textiles such as gauzy veils.
Spider silk is one of nature’s true wonder materials. It has up to five times the tensile strength of steel and can stretch to four times its original length without breaking, even at extremely low temperatures. In recent years, scientists have used atomic force microscopes to study the silk of the venomous brown recluse spider and have made some remarkable discoveries. The individual strands are 1,000 times thinner than a human hair, and these in turn are woven from thousands of impossibly fine nanostrands just 20 millionths of a millimetre wide.
A single spider can produce up to eight different kinds of specialised silk for specific tasks such as web building, making nests, and wrapping prey. Many species make silk kites to ride the wind, known as ballooning. The diving bell spider weaves itself a miniature submarine within which it spends most of its life fully submersed.
Attempts to mass produce or synthesise gossamer have proved elusive. Genetic engineers have experimented with adding spider silk genes to organisms as diverse as plants, bacteria, and even goats, but to no avail. Recent attempts with yeast, E. coli bacteria, and silkworms have yielded some success, but without the complex weaving of the spider’s spinnerets, the extraordinary potential of gossamer remains largely out of reach.
Introduction Aeolian Alpenglow Apricity Asperous
Benthos Crepuscular Crispate Crown shyness
Desire lines Dreich Endragoned Edgelands
Frondescence Fumarole Gluggaveður Gossamer
Karst Komorebi Lawrence Long acre
Machair Monkey’s wedding Moonglade
Psithurism Quartz Rakuyou Roaring forties
Snag Soft estate Specular, diffuse and pellucid
Spoondrift Steam fog Swash zone Sylvan