What I find highly fascinating about plants is how they trick us all. At first sight, they look so helpless. Which, I assure you, they are NOT!

There is this saying: “if you don’t like it where your are, just move, you are not a tree”. True, if a tree grows somewhere, it can not move anywhere. Plants however possess a whole scala of possibilities to find the right spot in the first place, or to make a spot fit their strenuous needs. If you don’t like it in the desert, because there is no water, there is no reason at all to give up. Just growing several tens of meters of root system does the trick perfectly. The same holds true for nutrients. If you do not find enough food, just bond with a bunch of fungi and let them bring you everything you want. Helpless? Not at all!

And then there is that one fascinating trick I really love: if you don’t know the faith of your children, just make thousands. Send them out to all directions of the wind and hope they find a good life. Chances are high that at least part of your offspring finds what they need.

I like how some plants give every one of their children a little parachute and, with the blessing of mummy, launch them into the sky. It is wonderful to see how successful this strategy turns out to be. So wonderful I made it a major factor of my research: traveling plants and how they find their perfect location.