Botany
Mackenzie Hyatt
I have learned to be less like the fern, Mimosa pudica, folding my fronds at a touch, silent bipinnate applause. I am now more like a venus flytrap, Dionaea muscipula, offering nectar through great soft fangs, interlocking. I know that I am ancient like the maidenhair tree, Ginkgo biloba, with a lineage of mitochondrial mothers, before there was a word for mothers. I realize that I am brand new like the wild ginger, Hexastylis finzelii, immature and largely unknown but a moment in the terrestrial eye. I love like the blood-red amaryllis, Hippeastrum reginae, stubborn and simple and loud, a perennial, never prodigal son. Water me, and I will grow. Don’t, and I may still grow. Volume 34.1 65
