Monkey Puzzle Tree

The Norfolk Island Pine is a member of a family called “monkey puzzle.” They are native to southern South America, New Guinea, New Caledonia and, of course, Norfolk Island, an island in the Southern Pacific Ocean. The name “monkey puzzle” comes from the fact that its pattern of branching is so irrational that you can’t tell where limbs begin or end. Another member of the family, found in Australia, is also called the Monkey Puzzle Tree because it is said that its needles are so arranged that monkeys are left totally befuddled about how to climb it.

One odd feature of the Norfolk Island Pine makes it unwise to try to start a new plant from cuttings. If you take a cutting from the vertical shoot at the top of the tree, you will ruin its appearance. If you take a cutting from a side shoot, it will root, but it will always grow horizontally, never forming a new tree.

The early pioneers of science understood that God was not forced to create anything in a certain way – there was no limit to His creativity. So they saw science as an effort to study, first hand, just how God chose to do things, or as one great scientist said, “to think God’s thoughts after Him.”

 How far we fail to see

into the wonder of our beginning

retreating within our own minds

to the safest corners of explaination

 

in answer to all  the genius

the infinity of  the universe

that pales in comparison

to you

 

for whom all else was made

to entice you to look

to invite you to listen

and so cause you to smile

 

at the genius of love

like a message in a bottle

written to be found

and so read all the way home

 

by

peter harris

 

 

 

 

 

~ by rimofheaven on April 5, 2008.