Curiosity Cabinet

Three Things I’m Curious About #48

A zoo in Tennessee welcomed a spotless baby giraffe this week. This pattern is so unusual that the baby is the only known spotless giraffe in the world. Fortunately, her lack of natural camoflague won’t make her a target for predators like it might in the wild.

A mother giraffe nuzzles her baby. The baby is a solid brown colour with no spots.
Photo by Brights Zoo via Today.

Cauliflory is a phenonemon where plants produce flowers and fruits directly from their trunks and branches. The Judas tree (Cercis siliquastrum) is a stunning example.

Pink flowers grow directly from the gnarled trunk of a tree.
The Judas Tree by Sommix59, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This poem by Matthew Olzmann lives rent free in my head at all times.

Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf Pine in North America
—Southern Pines, NC

Tell me what it’s like to live without

curiosity, without awe. To sail

on clear water, rolling your eyes

at the kelp reefs swaying

beneath you, ignoring the flicker

of mermaid scales in the mist,

looking at the world and feeling

only boredom.  To stand

on the precipice of some wild valley,

the eagles circling, a herd of caribou

booming below, and to yawn

with indifference. To discover

something primordial and holy.

To have the smell of the earth

welcome you to everywhere.

To take it all in and then,

to reach for your knife.
Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf Pine in North America by Matthew Olzmann

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