Yellow

Every flower is unique. And yet, some small yellow flowers have a nickname among botanists: DYCs, Damned Yellow Composites. Those are plants of the Asteraceae family, common worldwide, usually tenacious weeds with small yellow flowers. They may be pretty, but they’re so much alike that they’re hard to tell apart.

Botanists sometimes don’t even try. It may not matter ecologically exactly which species those flowers belong to. Identifying them as DYCs serves for all but the most rigorous scientific purposes.

Every small songbird is also unique but far too many are similar. The ones that are hard to distinguish are sometimes called dickybirds by birdwatchers, and often these birds, especially all those warblers, have a touch of yellow.

There are more galaxies in the sky than grains of sand on Earth’s beaches, so how many stars will be standard M-class yellow star like our own Sol? Too many to count.

Flowers, birds, stars: yellow abounds. So does ambition.

Flowers, birds, and suns all strive for more, and our universe undergoes constant change as a result. Birds compete with song. Stars create more complex matter at every generation. Imagine what a weed will be like as eternity gives it time to perfect its art. The bouquets will astound us with their sheer ambition.

Yellow means aspiration and change — changes too small and slow for us to see, yet we can enjoy their success so far: a field of flowers, a morning filled with birdsong, and a sunny day. Yellow unites them in beauty.