So says the sooth

Dear L,

Trust that all the shards of our puzzle will gradually fall into place. In the meantime, please find here a note, however cryptic for the time being, that I just transcribed from my first interview with you last week:

“So how did your international career as a histologist get off the ground?”
“It started with a seed.”
“Just any seed?
“Well, it was a seed I found in the grass, behind the house where I grew up in eastern Finland. It was a Ranta-alpi seed, Lysimachia vulgaris," you added to aid in identification.

I looked up Lysimachia vulgaris when I got home and could identify it as a yellow loosestrife of the primrose family, sometimes considered invasive outside of its native range. The name stems from the Greek and Latin (lusis, lysis) meaning to loosen, deliver, solve, from the Indoeuropean word maghe for power, or battle. The plant is assumed to have soothing properties.

“My professor wanted to cultivate seeds in several nutrient solutions and see how their morphology and growth were affected in varying concentrations of amino acids. My Ranta alpi seeds happened to deviate in unexpected ways from other seeds in glycine-rich solutions. The stalks were deformed, there was rapid undifferentiated growth in the root system, and the leaves were thin and pale yellow.”

tbc...

Lysimachia vulgaris
Illustration from original book source: Prof. Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz 1885, Gera, Germany. Permission granted to use under GFDL by Kurt Stueber.