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Catalpas stand as one of the largest deciduous trees at almost sixty feet tall, and dangle long bean pods and flat seeds with wings to help them fly.
catalpas also yield good tone wood for guitars.
the first doctora of her tiny village in northern Philippines—
Its branches stretch horizontally to nearly the length of a bus,
The foot-long leaves of catalpa trees
indigo buntings. There is no other blue like that of these birds, no feather more electric. They navigate by following the North Star,
Firefly eggs and larvae are bioluminescent,
When we see these beacons flashing their lights, they usually have only one or two weeks left to live.
the approximately 1.5 million plants the Chicago Botanic Garden has on site, the one that scared and delighted me the most when I was a child was Mimosa pudica—the touch-me-not plant. (Or, depending on your preference: sensitive plant,
and its spherical lavender-pink flowers,
most notable feature is that when you piano your fingers over the leaves of this plant, they give a shudder and a shake and quickly fold shut,
In 1986, the tallest saguaro ever recorded—at seventy-eight feet—
The cactus wren, the largest wren in North America at a whopping seven inches long, is one of the only birds that doesn’t require standing water to drink—it gets all of its water from juicy insects and fruit.
The narwhal’s “horn” is actually a tooth
Scientists believe that a narwhal can make up to 1,000 “clicks” per second that can be then transmitted out in narrow or wide rays to search for food or avoid ice.
Narwhals are found mainly in the Arctic Ocean, but occasionally a small pod of them wanders into a Canadian fjord.
narwhals like to swim upside-down? Can you imagine seeing a three thousand-pound narwhal
the narwhals just dive, dive, dive—they can survive at almost five thousand feet below sea level.
Sunflowers so full, my mom would stop her little Chevy Chevette on the side of the road and snap pictures
genus Micrixalus, and herpetologists have named them “dancing frogs.”
you might think of the delightfully named Michigan J. Frog from the old Looney Tunes cartoons. Michigan J. wore a top hat and carried a cane, sang “Hello! Ma Baby,” and only danced when people weren’t watching.
wet rock near a cool stream and stretching back one leg at a time. When the leg is fully extended, he spreads his toes as wide as possible, like opening an umbrella, with the webbing between each stretched as far as it can go—
A dancing frog is about the size of a golf ball
Frogs are the great bioindicators of this planet—meaning the health of dancing frogs is indicative of the health of the biosphere itself.
The squid’s eye is about the size of a shooter marble, but this is nevertheless the largest eye-to-body ratio of any animal on the planet.
these friends made me believe the mantra, “If one of us does well, we all do well.” They were generous with their support.
I never saw anyone who looked like me in books, movies, or videos.
whale sharks only eat plankton and bits of shrimp, and their throats are the size of a quarter
Octopuses are some of the only animals found whooshing and gliding through every single ocean on the planet:
They’re known to wheel around anywhere from pelagic ripples near a shoreline to six thousand feet below the surface,
three hundred suckers that run down the length of each octopus arm.
These suckers contains about ten thousand sensory neurons that detect texture, shape, and, most of all, taste.
Some cockatiels know how to whistle whole tunes,
hope is the thing with feathers.
To find a monogamous mate to build their egging structure, a flamingo locks step and step with other flamingos,
one of the longest bird lives on the planet: about fifty or so years together.
The town had never seen that many saris and Barong Tagalogs—the men’s formalwear of the Philippines, hand-loomed from pineapple fibers—
most newts almost always know how to come back to their home pond, the very one where they hatched. Scientists in Indiana recently discovered that newts find their way home by aligning with the earth’s electromagnetic field.
These newts are one of the only amphibians to contain a ferromagnetic mineral in their bodies,
MONARCH BUTTERFLY Danaus plexippus There’s a spot over Lake Superior where migrating butterflies veer sharply. No one understood why they made such a quick turn at that
connection: a mountain rose out of the water in that exact location thousands of years ago. These butterflies and their offspring can still remember a mass they’ve never seen, sound waves breaking just so, and fly out of the way. How did they pass on this knowledge of the invisible? Does this message transmit through the song they sing to themselves on their first wild nights, spinning inside a chrysalis?
Maybe what we can do when we feel overwhelmed is to start small. Start with what we have loved as kids and see where that leads us.
whose work reached out to the larger world via her commitment to social justice.
for knowing when to give me quiet and when I needed the sea.
