Fern with Stitching
Friday, May 30th, 2008
Pasadena, California. The Huntington Garden. This fern has an interesting embossment on it that reminds me of the stitching on a pair of jeans. I wonder what purpose the embossment serves on the leaf structurally. Could it be like the "creases" in the sheet metal of car bodies, put in to give those large expanses of metal more strength? Or maybe it has to do with guiding water down the leaf to the roots. Could it be that these bumps are caused by insects who, in some symbiotic way help the plant? I also wonder where the embossment came from in the evolution of this plant, and where it is going. After all, a photograph of a plant is a snapshot in evolutionary time: a single frame in a long life history linked to many others, or should we say "stitched" to many others.
