“Designed to Move: Seeds That Float, Fly or Hitchhike through the Desert Southwest” was organized with photographer Taylor James and botanists from ASU’s Herbarium and the Desert Botanical Garden, Phoenix. The exhibition, which featured Taylor’s macrophotography, explored not only the surprising beauty of desert seeds but also how their functional diversity could inspire designs for such human applications as self-activated robots and more efficient wind-turbine blades. Check out this photo-essay from Zygote Quarterly for an introduction to the exhibition.
Designed to Move
Photo: Michelle Fehler, 2022
“Designed to Move” from Zygote Quarterly
Ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan got it right. Plants are nouns, he once wrote. Seeds are verbs. Plants are rooted in place. Seeds are designed to move.
This is the inherent paradox in the life of most plants. They are attached to the earth, but their offspring must travel to find a safe site in which to germinate and flourish. Faced with this dilemma, seeds have evolved ingenious solutions to the challenges and opportunities of moving through their environments—whether in a tundra or prairie, forest or grassland, chaparral or desert.
