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Her subject was Arabidopsis thaliana, a mustard also known as mouse-ear cress, that has been described as a model plant for genome gnalysis.

Even more surprising, two temperate plant species from the Northern Hemisphere, annual meadow grass and mouse-ear chickweed, colonised sites faster than any other species.

Three women in their 20s, each wearing mouse-ear headbands, waited their turn; one of them, Natalie Parks, from Salt Lake City, said hugging Minnie was “a chance to reconnect with my childhood.”

The Girl Scouts are sending up ants, brine shrimp and plants as test subjects, while University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists are flying up seeds from mouse-ear cress, a small flowering weed used in genetic research.

It, too, has those attractive bracts above bluish-gray mouse-ear leaves, and it’s marginally hardy for us and probably safer now that we don’t seem to dip that much anymore into the teens.