It is tough to be unironically enthusiastic about things without feeling silly, without feeling like whatever it is that you enjoy is unimportant and not worthy of the feeling.

Humans evolved living among plants for millions of years––we feel more comfortable around them. As a college student in the urban Midwest, you are not in your natural habitat. Many of you do not see nature often. This can change. Just get a plant. It is that simple.

Deep winter might seem like a bad time to start a series about plants. It’s true that all the plants outside are dead or in retreat, and the world is bleak and grey. But what if I told you there is another world, where the plants never die, where seasons never change, where mankind is the master of plants in view.

You saw them, but before you saw them you smelled them. The scent of bile and garbage, fruit scattered across the sidewalk like big salmon eggs, that pop into orange mush under your feet. Yet their unpleasant spell is offset by their spectral beauty –– elegant, fanned leaves, skeletal branches; an echo of the cretaceous.