In the Namib desert there is a plant, Welwitschia, that grows exactly two leaves in its life and never makes another. They come up with the seedling and keep growing from a strip at the base for as long as the plant lives, which carbon dating puts at several centuries at least. The wind and the sand shred them into ribbons, so an old one looks like a heap of torn rope, but it is still the same two leaves.

What gets me is which end is old. The part touching the plant is new this year. The frayed tips lying out on the sand are the oldest living pieces of it, pushed out there slowly by everything grown since. Most things keep their past at the centre. This one keeps it at the edge, wearing away.