Wonderful Things: Desmids, Microscopic Plants of Unusual Beauty and Oddball Behavior

Sometimes I want to show you something just because it's wonderful. So today I'm introducing a new feature: Wonderful Things. The name is taken from my blog's masthead, but is also inspired by Howard Carter . When he broke in to the tomb of Tutankhamun, he stuck a candle in the hole and surveyed the contents. After a pause, his patron Lord Carnarvon asked him if he saw anything. "Yes," Carter replied. " Wonderful things. "So here's Wonderful Thing #1: Desmids . I stumbled on these as I was writing about the Alternation of Generations in my post a few back on mosses. With tiny, sculpted bodies and some distinctly unplantlike behavior, desmids are gorgeous botanical oddballs. The best description for them might be "chiseled" -- although not the sort of chiseling that comes from protein shakes and 6-minute abs. This is more the kind that comes from guys with Italian last names and lucrative papal commissions. [More]