Survival Myth Busted! Finding Directions By the Moss on Trees

Moss grew on the west side of this stump.

One of the pervasive folk legends about finding directions  in the wilderness or woods, is that moss grows on a certain side of a tree or rock.
Just find your way by observing where the moss is,  according to this theory, and you won’t get lost. According to this traditional old “wisdom,” the moss is thickest on the north side of a tree in the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere, the moss is thickest on the south side. Or so the story goes. I took my compass, and went to several different ecosystems; desert, rain forests, conifer forests and deciduous forests in the southeast to test this theory.
Here is what I found.