Impressed by the sheer variety of species inhabiting the ruins in the 1850s, a British botanist named Richard Deakin decided to do a botanical survey of this unique environment. He cataloged more than four hundred different species, some of which were quite rare (or completely absent, as far as he knew), in the rest of Europe. Puzzling over how these diverse plants could all wind up in one place, Deakin formulated a theory: the burrs and other seeds of these rare plants might have been carried in the fur and stomachs of the lions, giraffes, and other exotic foreign species that had been
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