Robin Wall Kimmerer of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation is a bryologist, a plant scientist who specializes in mosses. To
Kimmerer, mosses are Earth’s most adaptable plants: they can clone ______ enter a dormant state in times of drought, and
grow in areas that don’t have soil.
themselves;
themselves,
themselves. And
themselves
Choice B is the best answer. The convention being tested is the punctuation of items in a series. The comma after
“themselves” is used conventionally to separate the ﬁrst item (“they can clone themselves”) and the second item (“enter a
dormant state in times of drought”) in the series of things mosses can do. 
Choice A is incorrect because a semicolon can’t be used in this way to separate items in a simple series such as this. Choice
C is incorrect because it results in a rhetorically unacceptable sentence fragment beginning with “And enter.” Choice D is
incorrect because it fails to use appropriate punctuation to separate the ﬁrst and second items in the series.