Summers in California are marked by hands with deep purple liquid running along palm lines and in between the fingers, dripping off the sides and trailing down the wrists, tiny brown hairs stuck to fingers and palms. Every time I look at a pair of […]

I spent my elementary school vacations at my best friend’s home in Los Angeles, California. We grew up in Historic Filipinotown, an enclave home to the city’s first wave of immigrants from the Philippines. Her home had avocado and orange trees, abundant kudzu, and plenty […]

To live in Sweden in May is to experience a veritable explosion of blooms: with nearly 20 hours of sunlight, each day something new is blooming while something else fades away. Yesterday this bright pink plant caught my attention because it so resembled the Western […]

Sliced lives; inconspicuous and dormant. Human events read out loud from timelines imprinted across dead tissues. As the skin of others gathers in these crevasses of plant history; quiet trees become silent. Until the conservator cleans off the years and awakens the giant within.   […]

The cobra lily got its name from the hood-like shape of its specialized leaf: a pitcher filled with a secretion that digests insects lured by the sweet liquid to enter and slip down the pitcher into the fatal brew. This plant isn’t a lily at […]