the leaves

As the brain of man is the speck of dust in the universe that thinks, so the leaves -- the fern and the needled pine and the latticed frond and the seaweed ribbon -- perceive the light in a fundamental and constructive sense. The flowers looking in from the walled garden through my window do not, it is true, see me. But their leaves see the light, as my eyes can never do. They take it, as it forever spills away radiant into space in a golden waste, to a primal purpose. They impound its stellar energy, and with that force they make life out of the elements. They breathe upon the dust, and it is a rose.

Say that this is done with neither thought nor passion, and by something other than will. True that a plant may not think; neither will the profoundest man ever put forth a flower. Of the use and beauty of flowering there can be no shade of doubt. It is a rare thought of which as much can be said.

-- Donald Culross Peatie Flowering Earth