No risk is more terrifying than that taken by the first root. A lucky root will eventually find water, but its first job is to anchor -- to anchor an embryo and forever end its mobile phase, however p...
Being paid to wonder seems like a heavy responsibility at times.
Plants are not like us. They are different in critical and fundamental ways. As I catalog the differences between plants and animals, the horizon stretches out before me faster than I can travel and f...
I wonder who else in the world was having such an exquisite dawn.
Bill was wrestling with his undercooked chicken. "Wow," I remarked while examining my own plate. "I don't think I can eat this." "I know. It's gross," he conceded. "But it's free, so I scarf down seco...
Love and learning are similar in that they can never be wasted.
After scientists broke open the coat of a lotus seed (Nelumbo nucifera) and coddled the embryo into growth, they kept the empty husk. When they radiocarbon-dated this discarded outer shell, they disco...
Oh, I'm not worried about him,' returned Bill. 'He's gone. It's not any more complicated than that. Honestly, if I admit it, it's me that I feel bad for.' He walked away from me and looked out toward...
People don't know to make a leaf, but they know how to destroy one.
My mother taught me that reading is a kind of work, and that every paragraph merits exertion, and in this way, I learned how to absorb difficult books. Soon after I went to kindergarten, however, I le...
My mother taught me that reading is a kind of work, and that every paragraph merits exertion, and in this way, I learned how to absorb difficult books.
The leaves of the world comprise countless billion elaborations of a single, simple machine designed for one job only – a job upon which hinges humankind. Leaves make sugar. Plants are the only things...
Once your baby tree is in the ground, check it daily, because the first three years are critical. Remember that you are your tree's only friend in a hostile world.
Our world is falling apart quietly. Human civilization has reduced the plant, a four-million-year-old life form, into three things: food, medicine, and wood. In our relentless and ever-intensifying ob...
You may have heard that America doesn't have enough scientists and is in danger of "falling behind" (whatever that means) because of it. Tell this to an academic scientist and watch her laugh. For the...
People will tell you that you have to know math to be a scientist, or physics or chemistry. They're wrong. ... What comes first is a question, and you're already there. It's not nearly as involved as...
I have accepted that I don't know all the things that I ought to know, but I do know things that I need to know.
