Why do Goldenrod and Asters look so beautiful side by side? 🌾🌸
For Robin Wall Kimmerer, that question sparked a lifelong journey into botany, despite being told that science has no place for beauty. Today, we know their vivid pairing isn’t just aesthetic, it’s evolutionary. The contrasting colors make both flowers more visible to pollinators, a perfect example of nature’s brilliance in action.
by TheMuseumOfScience
9 Comments
Watch the full conversation on [YouTube](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ChdCy162c4o).
She’s magnificent. What podcast is she speaking to?
I love, love Robin! She’s my favorite author and I can read her books over and over. She has inspired me to be a better person and is the reason for my always growing native pollinator prairie yard.
She talks about this very subject in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, one of my absolute favorite reads. 💜💛
Well yellow and purple are complimentary colours, that might be part of it! Which is something I learned in art school haha
I have several lonely Swamp Milkweed plants by my front door that I planted a year ago spring. It’s not a good place for them design-wise – I put them there in a moment of irrational panic that I must do so immediately to help Monarchs. The other day I noticed that some plants have grown in very, very close to them… almost intertwined with them. Turns out to be White wood aster and Blue-stemmed goldenrod. There’s almost nothing else growing nearby (the property is currently under renovation so things are largely denuded). I’m still marveling at how these two lovely plants both came and settled themselves in with the milkweed.
love her.
That professor she describes is a doof and the perspective is not that common among my colleague scientists.
I really enjoyed her book , it is a good
read in the cold, dead winter . 🙂