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Charles Darwin, gardener.(unknown)(Darwin's Garden: An Evolutionary Adventure)

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From: The Christian Science Monitor
Date: 20080530
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Byline: Jane Roy Brown Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

In 1857, Charles Darwin staked out a two-by-three-foot patch of ground in his orchard, cleared away all the grass and other plants, and fenced it off. Then he waited, watched, and took notes.

Any gardener can predict what happened next: the rectangle of bare earth soon sprouted seedlings - of weeds. This little plot, which Darwin called his a*weed garden,a* was a testing ground for the principle of natural selection, one of the key mechanisms in his theory of evolution.

Darwin's home gardens - and ...

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