New paper published: a tour of the Hawaiian silverswords

I think every biologist has a favorite kind of organism. For some people it is a charismatic animal, like an elephant, or a whale. For me it is silverswords. I first learned about these plants in my first year of graduate school. Someone was giving a lecture on adaptive radiations, and showed photographs of a…

The pleasures of slow botanizing

Hiking and botanizing are distinct pleasures. Hiking is the joy of pushing one’s body, of covering long distances, of discovering new landscapes. Botanizing is the opposite. It is the joy of moving slowly, of looking closely, of reading the story of a place, and of relishing the discovery of something beautiful or unexpected. On a…