Kalyani Tupkary

But while nature may mete out time’s passage in these horological devices, it takes human observation of the heavens to set them. Even the most precise atomic clock must be periodically tweaked to account for variations in the earth’s rotation. Some clocks, however, are tuned more directly to nature.

Like so many botanical concepts, the flower clock originated with the Swedish ur-taxonomist Carl Linnaeus, in his 1751 treatise “Philosophia Botanica.” Based on field observations, he divided flowers into three categories. The meteorici open and close with the weather. The tropici follow the changing hours of daylight. And the aequinoctales,

Is there a “Rosebud” object in your past? A long-vanished thing that lingers in your memory—whether you want it to or not? As much as we may treasure the stuff we own, perhaps just as significant are the objects we have, in one way or another, lost. What is it about these bygone objects? Why do they continue to haunt us long after they’ve vanished