Abominable Mystery

the magnolia
how beauty evolved
stays a mystery

Writing to his friend Joseph Hooker in 1879, Charles Darwin famously referred to the origin of flowering plants as an 'abominable mystery'.
There are two competing hypotheses. One says that the first flowering plants were woody shrubs with large blooms like modern magnolias; the other says that they were almost the opposite - non-woody plants with small flowers, like modern black pepper plants.

Me...I just love Magnolias