Fog lily
Lilium caliginosum
On fog nights in the St. John's Narrows, skippers steered home by a widow walking Signal Hill, because every compass near her lily pointed at her.
Fourth-Cone Mammillaria
Mammillaria griseiflora
A Kutaisi windowsill cactus flowers grey to every human eye and bright to every spectrometer, and one unclaimed exam answer names the colour.
Shubin's Ribbon
Laminaria famae
A kelp found in Siberian larch forest in 1887, and an auctioneer who acquired a limp the same week he wrote to deny it.
Mother-Tongue Pondweed
Potamogeton mutuatus
A pondweed above a wartime Icelandic signal station gave the town the weather of whatever language was last spoken over its water.