I Am Casuarina

Robin and the Honey Badger’s mission is to recharge biology with originality for you, the non-specialist reader. Exploring the Bio-edge is a series of e-essays presenting lateral thoughts in search of ever more interesting stories from biology. In this e-essay: Casuarinas would rather burn at the stake than be called pines or oaks. We give this family of trees and shrubs an opportunity to speak for itself about life, death, and stomatal aspirations. If a little green is good, a lot of green is not necessarily better. But a little fire of life, well, that is another matter. Join us as a plant lineage with a seemingly perverse approach to the next generation explains its nature in its own words.

Each morning Robin and the Honey Badger wake up to a world of Nature with new curiosity. Which aspects of the natural world have been underlooked? Which adaptations or non-adaptations of organisms have been downplayed because of some theoretical bias? Which observations have yet to be integrated because of interdisciplinary timidity? How laterally can we think as we cruise the bewildering diversity of life forms on Earth? Join us in our mission of Exploring the Bio-edge in a series of e-essays that fearlessly - but accurately - cover all corners of biology.