Widow's Fern
Polypodium memorans
An ordinary fern whose fronds uncurl only near the recently bereaved — and whose genome remembers who was lost.
Lamplighter's Moss
Bryum vesperale
A cushion moss that photosynthesises from attention rather than light, and dies in rooms nobody visits.
Cartographer's Root
Daucus itinerans
A wild carrot whose taproot grows in the exact shape of the route to wherever its seed was collected.
Quorum Thistle
Cirsium consensus
A thistle colony that voted, measurably, on where to spread next, and was destroyed after its third vote.
Hollow Elm
Ulmus testamenta
An elm whose growth rings record the last words spoken near it each year — and which has started recording words that have not been spoken yet.
Bonded Thyme
Thymus pannonicus
A creeping thyme seized at the Serbian border weighs 31 grams to its owner and cannot be moved by anyone else until the paperwork is signed.
Stranger's Cactus
Echinopsis peregrina
In 1933 a Hoyvík woman asked a court to declare her husband an impostor, though the harbour clerk, the town and his wage book all disagreed.
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.
Relay Laurel
Aniba vicaria
A Brazilian laurel with no scent in the air, whose smell came out of every radio in Worcestershire the morning its seed packet was opened on air.
Stationmaster's rush
Juncus constans
A stationmaster pressed a rush from his own platform in 1954; everyone who has written about it since stays 11.4 km from that platform.
Honest-Signal Saw-Sedge
Cladium mariscus
A stand of saw-sedge in the Brière left lapwings unable to fake a broken wing and a guest's setter unable to play, until a hotel paved it over.
Expected-Value Indigo
Amorpha fruticosa
A false indigo pressed in 1915 keeps the sky over it at the average: 0.14 inches of rain a day at Yazoo City for seventy-six years.
Fire-Refusing Cane
Phyllostachys algida
A pressed bamboo cane is why a Tangier loft burned for nine hours in 1898 and nothing in it got warmer than 21 °C.
Maker's-Hour Liverwort
Conocephalum horarium
A Hardanger liverwort pulls every nearby clock to the local time of the town that made it, and a court once rebuilt a ship's galley from nine of them.
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.
Threshold Oboe-Cane
Arundo donax
An oboe reed cut from Vukovar cane is silent except in doorways, and its maker listed 37 of them and sealed a 38th in a footnote.
Countersigned Rambler
Rosa libaviensis
From 1904, whenever a Libau glassblower signed his name, his hand wrote the name of his rose instead, including on his will.
Third-below Coelogyne
Coelogyne subtertia
Lisu children raised under one Fugong chestnut can sing only a third below another voice; alone they make no note, and neither does the dog.
Bad-Faith Spruce
Picea abies
Paper pulped from a Carpathian spruce sheds the ink of any promise its writer means to break, and one herbalist's card has lost a child's dose.
Thirty-Round Tillandsia
Tillandsia rivasii
A pressed Atacama air plant makes every circle near it exactly three diameters round, and a ship's purser had to restate its drum for customs.