In his room, little Jimmy listens to the latest metal music on his portable CD. Meanwhile, in southwestern china, a Buddhist monk tends to his garden. Rocks lay piled in simple and harmonious patterns. Water trickles across in a stream. Grass and vines delicately touch the earth. Birds occasionally chirp. This garden is special -- each flower and plant is unique. One flower or plant for each species. Let us regard an anomaly -- the plant for the species homo sapiens. This species is not a plant, and has chosen as its representative something that is also not a plant. It is also not, by most accounts, alive. It is a thin flower, with a green stalk, and a small grey head. It listens. It does more than listen -- it lends you its ear. All around the world, people listen to the plant, to the garden, to the small stream, the occasional bird chirp, the occasional walk of the monk, or another occasional mobile creature. Unlike the other stalks, this stalk has a different sun, and unlike the other stalks, this stalk sends things to its sun. It is, I think you will agree, a most unusual "plant".