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by Margarita Engle Ferns and clubmosses made the world green. Without flowering plants, the forest had no use for pollination. The sky was devoid of hummingbirds and bees. Wind was the only mystery needed for dispersal. Millions of years later flowers were so commonplace that the near invisibility of fern spores in a world of solid, hefty seeds led men to assume that ferns could grant invisibility to magicians. Now, at a roadside rest stop watching a tiger swallowtail on a butterfly bush, I begin to wonder which of my own time-clad assumptions will turn out to be simply vision's error. Return to:
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