[ Lost in the Landscape ]

snowflakes and insects

Snowflakes? What does this San Diego guy know about snowflakes?

Maybe a cou­ple things–at least if we’re talk­ing about the cut paper kind.

I’m sure it was an ele­men­tary school project at some point, fold­ing sheets of paper, then cut­ting through the dif­fer­ent lay­ers with scis­sors, and then finally unfold­ing the paper to reveal an intri­cate paper-lace snowflake. I thought it was magic the way one nick with the scis­sors, cut­ting through mul­ti­ple lay­ers of paper at once, mul­ti­plied into many iden­ti­cal lit­tle removals all over the snowflake. And I still kinda think the process is magic.

I was reminded of those paper snowflakes when I saw this gor­geous photo Jenny sent me of a canna leaf that had been munched by some gar­den beastie. It looked like the leaf was still devel­op­ing when the bug bur­rowed a hole from the out­side towards the stem. When the leaf unfurled, the insect dam­age unfurled along with it, cre­at­ing these uni­form, rhyth­mic lit­tle cuts in the leaf.

Pretty artis­tic insect, no?

November 21 2008 | Categories: art • gardening | Tags: cannas • insects • Jenny • snowflakes | 4 Comments »