This is a very small orchid I had the good fortune to see while working in Costa Rica earlier this year. The full scale on the image is no more than an inch – you are looking at a very very small flower! Do you like it? You’ll be dismayed, then, to find out that…

Leaves emerge through the fog as we drive through cloud forest. Visibility is no more than a few meters, and the road is mud beneath our wheels. The change is remarkable – just a few hours earlier we were in the sunny and sticky warmth of a moist tropical forest. It’s amazing how quickly plant…

I just returned from three weeks of botanical surveying in the forests of Costa Rica. I’ll write more about the trip – and what we found – in my next post, but for now I just want to share this lovely image. The plant you’re looking at was described to me as ‘una hoja plastica’,…

Have you ever thought about taking an x-ray of something besides your bones? Maybe a leaf? What if we could see the structure of a plant without damaging it in any way? The important issue is how to get contrast in the final image – do we look for x-rays to be absorbed (as in…