Word: spores
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...reproduce. Gaian proponents respond that the increase of oxygen in the atmosphere was slow enough to allow the mix of life- forms to adjust, and physician-author Lewis Thomas answers Dawkins by coyly suggesting that, through space exploration, mankind may be acting as an inadvertent disseminator of earth's spore...
...subjects" are small, mute structures with no minds of their own--not animals or people but seedpods, spores, pollen, sprouts, twigs, pupae, the embryonic scribblings of cellular life learning to write its name. One painting, Insecta, 1985, is full of chrysalises, cockchafers and stag beetles, with a red cicada clinging to a scrubby patch of blue ground. Another, Pitch Lake, 1985, has an array of spore clusters creeping, with phallic intent, across a sticky-looking field of bitumen. Some of the images are quite recognizable (there are clams, for instance, and bean sprouts), while others have the sketchy look...
Eventually, a German bookseller unveiled the "seed mystery" when he discovered that the fern reproduces by means of a tiny, asexually generated spore which falls to the ground and then sprouts...
Despite new research by scientists like the Tryons, many of the fer's functions remain a riddle. For example, water must penetrate the spore wall for germination: and although scientists know it passes in, they are unsure of why it does not leave the spore in dry times...
Moreover, Mlicon and sporopollen in the walls of the spore must play some role in the plant's existence, but thus far no one has been able to explain what that roles is. In fact, the sporopollen is an unusually tough material scientists say, and although its chemical components are currently unknown, many feel it could be used to produce a host of durable synthetic products...