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Many materials found in nature have unique architectures and surface chemistries that can be exploited for nanomaterial synthesis. For instance, plants and their derivatives have been used to prepare a wide variety of nanostructures with interesting morphologies. In this work, we discovered the unique ability of moss to produce 3D hierarchical, hollow metal oxide nanostructures using a general, one-pot approach. In particular, we obtained octahedral Fe₂O₃ with star-shaped voids as well as spherical Co₃O₄ with hollow profiles. Both materials displayed outstanding electrochemical performances in lithium-ion (LIBs) and sodium-ion (NIBs) batteries, highlighting the advantages of their unique 3D hierarchical nanostructures. We demonstrated for the first time that, hollow metal oxides nanoparticles, can be prepared using low cost, renewable templates that are widely abundant in nature. Our approach presents new …