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A grand architecture in miniature defines the way generations of the sweetgum tree last into the future. Nature designs the perfect time-travel vessel for every environmental niche – this one is spiked, to deter predators from its cargo; hollow, to float; hard to withstand crushing and plentiful – coming in great clumps to ensure survival. It is related – if not in toughness then in strangeness – to the wild walnut, the magnolia pod, the coconut. These craft fall by the hundreds at the children’s playground, looking green and ripe until the California air starts to dry them seconds later, and they begin to split and brown in the sun, gaps between their spikes widening from pinhole fissures to gaping wounds, from which seeds spill like thick, tan grains of sand.