Christian writes about the hidden structures of the natural world: spirals, symmetries, adaptations, and the oddities that make plants fascinating. His interests include carnivorous plants, mathematical patterns in nature, and the science behind everyday garden life.
After a July shower, a sacred lotus pond seems to hold a second, smaller weather system. Bright beads sit on the leaves without spreading. A breath of wind sends them skittering toward an edge, gathering dust as they go. Where a droplet has passed, the green can look newly polished. The leaf is not secreting soap, and water is not…
Turn over a bean leaf in July and you may find a row of white pinheads hovering beneath it. They are too orderly for dust and too widely spaced for mold. Each one hangs at the end of a filament so fine that the egg seems to be floating a fraction of an inch away from the leaf. The obvious…
On a warm July morning, a tomato flower can look too small for the job ahead of it. Five yellow petals bend backward around a pointed center. The flower hangs from a hairy green stem, facing slightly down, while the plant puts most of its visual effort into leaves and swelling fruit. Then a bumblebee arrives, grips the yellow cone,…
On a warm June evening, deadheading a garden spurge can reveal a hidden part of the plant. The cut end wells white almost at once. A broken lettuce stalk or dandelion stem does something similar, forming a pale bead that turns tacky while you watch. It is easy to call the liquid sap and leave the explanation there. Sap is…
Read more about The white sap in a broken stem is not ordinary sap
On a June morning, a garden can seem to have developed a strange habit. White froth appears around a lavender stem, in the fold of a strawberry leaf, or where a blade of grass meets its sheath. It looks freshly blown. Rain does not wash it into streaks, and no snail trail explains how it arrived halfway up a plant.…
Read more about The white foam on garden stems is a spittlebug nursery
By early May, a mayapple patch can look less like a group of wildflowers and more like a small green weather event. Smooth stems rise from the leaf litter, each one holding a pale, lobed leaf like an umbrella that has just opened after rain. The effect is so architectural that it is easy to miss the plant’s real trick:…
Read more about The mayapple hides its flower under an umbrella
Welcome. Many of you have written to us this week, bewildered that our standard compost round-up has been replaced by a rigorous analysis of synthetic crankcase lubricants. Let us be clear: this is an oil publication now. It has always been an oil publication in spirit. We were simply waiting for the horticultural community to admit that dirt is just…
Read more about The spring viscosity chart your garden refuses to respect
A bank of primroses can look almost uniform from the path: low wrinkled leaves, pale yellow flowers, and a scatter of gold across the last brown leaves of winter. Kneel down, however, and look into the flowers. Some have a small green button at the center. Others have a ring of yellow anthers. The difference is not age, weather, or…
In early March, the edge of a snowbank can reveal a lawn that looks as if it has been badly stored. The grass is flattened into pale circles. Some blades are glued together in a papery crust. In the dampest places, fine gray-white threads stretch across the surface like cobwebs laid down overnight. Spiders are not the only explanation. Those…
Read more about Those cobwebs beneath melting snow may be snow mold
On a mild February afternoon, the garden can open in narrow strips. Snow pulls back from the south side of a bed. The soil beneath it is dark and glossy, last autumn’s leaves are pressed flat, and a few small casts sit at the mouth of holes that were invisible the day before. The ground looks paused, but the evidence…
