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- Angiosperm -
I’ve talked about angiosperm before; they’re blooming
plants. As it turns out they’re blind. They are completely unable to see what’s
happening around them. How could they? They lack the organs to see. They have
no iris, no cornea, no retina, no vitreous humor, no optic nerve, and no brain
to receive the electrical data and convert it into an image. What they do have
is probably more amazing. By using a complex system of thermal and solar
sensors they can tell when winter is over. Using a biological accelerometer
they know which way is up, even while buried well beneath the surface. Then they
race to be the first to rise from the earth. They race to bloom so that they
sun will find their petals, and so the bees will find their stamen. But Mother
Nature sometimes plays a dirty trick on these plants. After a month of warmth
and rain, of lulling the plants into risking the journey into the unknown, a
sudden frost rolls through the valley freezing the infant plants. Some will
never recover. Their life cycle will be put to an end. For others it’s just an
inconvenience. The late snows and sudden freeze might delay the flowering of
the plant, but can’t stop its ultimate goals.
Mother Nature’s deception is nothing unexpected, nothing
novel. Yet some will fall prey to her every single time. They’ll feel the
warmth, they’ll drink from the sun, and when they believe they can take the
step into the unknown, she’ll strike. The frost may be short lived, but it may
even leave scars and wounds that won’t heal for years. Sometimes the damage
will be all but gone, and then another frost may come, freezing water that had
found its way inside, causing the seam to crack all over again.
But it must try again.
