Charles Darwin, Gentleman Farm

Even our local corn maze is celebrating Darwin’s 200th birthday (and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species). The iconic image of Darwin as an old man is flanked by five different species of Galapagos Island finches. According to the maze-makers at Warner Farm, there’s a lot more to the corn Darwin than looks:

 “Mazegoers will be challenged to identify and classify all living vertebrates and more. Because that's too easy they will also make their own close observations from images of biological curiosities found in the natural history collections of Amherst College and Greenfield Community College. And wait! There's more. They will need to naturally select the right trails in and out of Chuck's curly chin cilia.”

 Does this mean those beard wiggles are actually taxonomic branches? We’ll be checking out the phylogenetic fun this weekend. (We’ll let you know what we find.)

Comments

[twitter.com/Melonze]

Diane and James - it was great meeting you both tonight at Ignite! I can't wait to give the Darwin corn maze a try. I also see your weekly parasite post becoming an end of the week science fix for me already.

Take care!

-Ellen

[DianeAKelly]

Let us know what you think of the maze. We had a good time, despite some teenage grousing from our offspring.