Some of the most beautiful things in this show are the shikisi, or poem cards, in which the visual form of Koetsu's writing chimes wonderfully with the loops and eddies of Sotatsu's water, the spikes of his plant stems and the slow blur of his distant mountains.

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Picking up a pink bunch of roses, Hess shows me he'll be looking at leaves and stems for plant rust, mildew, whitefly and many more bugs.

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For a nonchewer, nonsmoker, she looks upon the upstairs room allotted to her as a hellhole, smelly, the walls green from the spit of the chewers, the crannies stuffed with the plant's unchewed stems.

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We normally think of the leaves as the edible parts of this plant, but ruby chard's deep red stems cook up as a tender, delicious little vegetable all on their own.

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It all stems from a gas leak at a chemical plant in Rouen, which is more than 60 miles north west of Paris.

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The plant was small, with spiny, silvery leaves, woody stems and blue flowers.

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Cutting back the lanky stems of a prized shrub leads not only to a smaller bush, it also reinvigorates the whole plant, thickening it up as side branches are stimulated into growth.

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