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The magnolia bloomed today“Wanting is an evolutionary product... But once wanting exists, it can take animals in all sorts of novel directions.”
Behold the magnolia, black tulip. The first of the season, an event in our household. Each rich pink petal is a marvel, a beauty, delicately veined, gently pointed. To make a whole flower with these components seems decadent, like a ring made of rings. Maybe it’s not the beauty of the form that makes me love them. Perhaps it is the narrative sensibility of the tree. Before it has even completely lost its leaves, tiny buds form covered in fuzzy stipules that protect them from cold. All through the late fall and early winter, these buds swell. Which will be the first to burst forth? They open in stages, dropping fuzzy slices of stipule. What remains begins to rouge, slowly, only slowly. A week ago, this bud seemed destined to be first. Then a second, smaller one began to catch up quickly. But no, today, the long-time favorite won, opening. It nearly immediately lost its tight bundled shape, spreading and stretching into space. This first moment is gorgeous, only loosely symmetrical, relaxed, in the manner of a robe falling open: A layering of petals, the sense of edge and arc, a roundness suggested more than delivered. Something of an alien (octopus?) skin in the texture. Though perhaps I only have octopus on the brain. I have been plowing through Australian philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith’s books. First, Other Minds, in which he describes in gorgeous detail his encounters with cephalopods, and what their obvious intelligence says about the presence of other minds on earth. Then, Metazoa, in which the story of the land animals emerges in greater detail, this evolutionary adventure in experiencing, unified selves. And now, Living on Earth, which just so happens to describes the entanglement of animals (insects!) and the emergence of the most successful plants on earth, the monocots, or flowering plants. And what flower might be the best stand in for the ur-flower? The magnolia, of course, pollinated by beetles, not bees, which did not yet exist. The flowers are “a rather exuberant early effort, as if celebratory of the new way of living,” Godfrey-Smith writes. oakland garden club could be anything. stay in touch. In Godfrey-Smith’s epic story, land animals—fast, smart, diverse—team up with plants to capture the staggering energy flows of solar energy available outside of the ocean. Plants, themselves, owe their lifeway to former free-living bacteria that came aboard to make usable energy from photons. And then, perhaps 120 million years ago, they evolved what we call flowers. “[P]lants could now interact at a distance, in a way mediated by the perceptions, nervous systems, and actions of animals,” he writes. “Insects became, in a sense, instruments used by plants to span space.” And this partnership led to an explosion of evolutionary success for the bloom and the beetle, alike. Maybe, in my animal brain, that is part of the vibrating, deep appeal of these flowers. This, perhaps, is why I watch their development with such interest. Perhaps there are forms of basic attraction, of want, that we humans have extended into something we call beauty. But still, at its origin, perhaps there is something hungrier and more necessary than it seems wise to admit. I like to imagine that we may share some core bits, some physical intuitions, some ideas of what is good going back very, very, very far. I’m not sure how much to trust this, but Godfrey-Smith’s view of the evolution and continuity of life lets me dream into this space. “It’s not that you will have inherited particular material parts from some ancient life-form, but that there is a chain of such relationships—the cells in you containing parts of earlier cells, which contained parts of earlier ones, and so on,” he writes. “When we look back then, it’s not just that we are living organisms, examples of life, and such things were around back then as well. And it’s not just that the link of reproduction has been present since then, with old organisms somehow making new ones. We are also a material continuation of what was here before… Our ties to ancient life-forms are not just a matter of causal connection. A stronger bond connects old and new organisms, projecting life through time, and this bond has been in place for most of the history of the Earth and much of the history of the universe.” The magnolia, then, is also an ode to the cyanobacteria and to the beetles. It’s a reminder of the partnerships in nature, and an avatar of deep time, and a gorgeous bloom perched on the still bare branches of my tree, and the feeling I get peering down into the mystery at its center. Or, to quote Godfrey-Smith one last time: “Wanting is an evolutionary product, something that evolution brought into the world,” he writes. “But once wanting exists, it can take animals in all sorts of novel directions.” You're currently a free subscriber to oakland garden club. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
© 2025 Alexis C. Madrigal |
Laden...
Laden...
