Travelling plants take

Roads up and down our mountains

No legs, yet still fast

It does not happen often that scientists dare to take the jump to something as far out of their comfort zone as poetry. Yet we all agree that it can be highly beneficial to aim for a totally different take on science communication once in a while.

That is why we set up a little Haiku competition within our research group, to find who finds the best way of representing his research in such a little poem. A challenge I can totally get behind!

Is it not just lovely to convert something as ‘dull’ as this graph from our latest paper into the 17 words of a Haiku?

Non-native species (left) from the lowlands move up with more than 600 meters in elevation in the roadsides. Native species (right) from the lowland, get almost 500 meter higher by road, while alpine species from the highland creep down with more than 200 meters. Species with an intermediate origin do not move. Source: Lembrechts et al. (2016) Ecography.