[Image: Unrelated image of incredible floral shapes 3D-printed by Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg (via)].

A story published earlier this year explained how pollinating insects could be studied by way of 3D-printed flowers. The actual target of the study was the hawkmoth, and four types of flowers were designed and produced to help understand the geometry of moth/flower interactions, including how "the hawkmoth responded to each of the flower shapes" and "how the flower shape affected the ability of the moth to use its proboscis (the long tube it uses as a mouth)."
Of course, a very similar experiment could have been done using handmade model flowers?not 3D printers?and thus could also have been performed with little fanfare generations ago. But the idea that a surrogate landscape can now be so accurately designed and manufactured by printheads that it can be put into service specifically for the purpose of cross-species dissimulation?that it, tricking species other than humans into thinking that these flowers are part of a natural ecosystem?is extraordinary.
[Image: An also unrelated project called "Blossom," by Richard Clarkson].

Many, many years ago, I was sitting in a park in Providence, Rhode Island, one afternoon reading a copy of Germinal Life by Keith Ansell Pearson. The book had a large printed flower on its front cover, wrapping over onto the book's spine.

Incredibly, at one point in the afternoon a small be...