adaptation

Cactus lingerie

Desert prickly pear cactus (Opuntia phaeacantha) along the trail to Corona Arch in Moab, Utah by Betsey Crawford

I had never been a fan of cactus. Prickly, tough-skinned, ungainly. Leaves so attenuated they’ve become sharp-tipped spines. Interesting shapes, perhaps. Fascinating as examples of environmental adaptation, thriving from western Canada to Patagonia. But nothing to love. Things have changed. When I first came to the southern California desert and hiked in the spare open […]

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The patient genius of transmutation

Adaptation: whole-leaf rosinweed (Silphium integrifolium) and one of the hundred species of grasshoppers at the Konza Prairie Biological Station by Betsey Crawford

“All is flux,” the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said 2500 years ago. “Nothing stays still.” He offered us a perfect description of transmutation, one of the great powers that cosmologist Brian Swimme ascribes to the universe. This is the third of those powers that I have explored, and one of the most intriguing. Since the first

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