Selaginella Lepidophylla does not know it’s waiting for rain. It’s roots do not yearn for flood. It’s leaves do not twist upward beseechingly. The argument could be made that it is not waiting at all, really, at least not in that expectant, care-worn, way bourn by anthropomorphic implication. Yes, time passes, bone dry, and Selaginella Lepidophylla is there. What of it?

The “Resurrection Plant” is desiccated. It is brown and it is dormant with all lively function slowed to a corpse-like still, but it’s not dead. Even separated from soil, laid out on an off-white field, it is alive. Why should it care about the rain? The rain is tacit. The rain WILL come eventually. Selaginella Lepidophylla is alive and can go on living for 50 years without so much as a stray pity drop from the sky. A freakishly strong wind might pull it from the ground and blow it across the sand like a tumbleweed, but it would not roll with it’s destiny caught up in piddling puddles. It would just roll, freakish wind guiding where it might.

No, the Resurrection Plant is superbly adapted, and I envy it this, because it is I who, desiccated and dormant, waits like a nervous child for rain.