Hummingbird in a Boojum Tree

I was very disapointed when I realized that the Boojum Tree was named from “The Hunting of the Snark” instead of the other way around.

Throwback Thursday

This fish is, somehow, levitating above the water. It may be full of helium and is unsafe to eat. It should be thrown back.

Leaf Me Alone

A few years back, I read an article that theorized that plants evolved their distinctive edges so that amphibians that were trying to eat them would hurt their soft mouths and go on to easier-to-eat plants. I, of course, cannot find the article today.

While I think the idea is fascinating, my fundamental problem with it is that I haven’t seen much, outside of certain oaks and holly, that show transition from a jagged-edge leaf to something more like a thorn. In fact, thorns seems to either be adapted from the whole leaf or from a branch, not from leaf “feature creep”, so to speak.

Granted, I’m not a botanist, and there could be whole families of plants I’m not thinking about. If you know of any family that shows evolution from a relatively flat and smooth leaf to something that clearly seems designed for defense, I’d be very interested in hearing about it.