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On a bright spring day, a lone 28-foot cactus towered above the dusty scrub within Saguaro National Park in Arizona.
在一个春光明媚的日子，亚利桑那州的巨人柱国家公园里，一株高约28英尺的仙人掌孤伶伶地矗立在底下的灌丛中。
Despite the cloudless sky and oven-like heat, the spiky giant looked strong and healthy.
尽管万里无云、热如烤箱，这株长满尖刺的巨柱看来仍旧强壮健康。
Rain had recently fallen in the park, and the plant's pleated sidewalls were extended, retaining hundreds of gallons of water inside.
公园刚下过雨，这株植物的皱褶外壁此刻鼓胀了起来，里面留住了几百公升的水分。
Such internal reservoirs help cacti thrive where other plants would instantly wilt.
像这样的内在储水库，让仙人掌在其他植物立刻就会枯萎的状态下，依然能够健全生长。
But the saguaro species (Carnegiea gigantea), native to the Sonoran Desert in the United States and Mexico, hides another evolutionary trick.
但原生于横跨美国与墨西哥的索诺兰沙漠中的巨人柱这个物种，还藏着另一个进化上的小手段。
To capture it in action, a park biologist named Don Swann had arrived with an extra-long, custom-made telescoping pole and camera mount system that he extended toward the giant's crown.
为了捕捉这个机制的运作实况，国家公园的生物学家唐·斯旺带著一支特别长的特制伸缩杆和相机架设系统来到这里，朝这株巨人柱的顶端伸上去。
Then he snapped several digital photos, the latest in a set of images he'd been taking for several weeks.
然后他拍了几张数码影像，他已经拍了好几个星期了，这是这组影像中最新的几张。
Later that afternoon, Swann reviewed the time-lapse series and pointed out that "something miraculous" was happening.
当天下午稍晚，斯旺检视了这系列的缩时影像，并指出有“神奇的事情”发生了。
The photos highlighted an array of tightly shut white-and-yellow flowers that ringed the top of the plant.
照片主角是环状排列在植物顶端、紧密闭合的许多黄白色花朵。
Saguaro flowers bloom only once and typically at night to protect their delicate internal anatomy from long hours of intense sun.
巨人柱的花只开一次，通常都是在晚上，以免娇弱的内部结构遭受烈日长时间的炙烤。
But the photos, when viewed sequentially, revealed something else: The buds appeared to be moving.
但如果按照时间顺序查看这些照片，会发现它还透露了别的事情：花苞似乎在移动。
From mid-April through mid-June, the flowers were slowly migrating in a counterclockwise fashion, traveling radially from the plant's eastern face to its northern side, which offered more consistent shade.
从4月中到6月中，花朵缓慢地以逆时针方向迁移，从植物的东面环状移动到北面，因为那边的遮阴比较稳定。
"This could allow saguaros to take advantage of warmer temperatures, and more sun, during the cooler early spring, while minimizing the more deleterious heat effects later in the season," Swann suggested.
“这让巨人柱在凉爽的早春时节能利用比较温暖的温度和更多阳光，然后到了晚春，又能让比较有害的热量影响降到最低”，斯旺指出。
Over the past half decade, Swann and other park scientists have teamed up with a group of citizen scientists to photograph 55 saguaros, becoming the first researchers to confirm with visual evidence that this floral migration happens annually.
过去五年来，斯旺和公园其他科学家及一群公民科学家组织起来，拍摄了55株巨人柱仙人掌，首度以视觉证据证实花朵年年都会这样迁移。
This is just one trait associated with just one species: All told, there are more than 1,500 known species of cacti, which, while still threatened by the unpredictability of climate change and human encroachment, continue to live in some of the harshest climates on Earth.
这还只是跟一个物种有关的一个性状而已：世界上已知的仙人掌总共有超过1500种，它们在无法预测的气候变化与人类进逼的威胁下，持续生长在地球上某些最严酷的气候环境中。
"A lot of the stories that have come out about cacti are fearful and negative," says desert plant ecologist Ben Wilder, director of the Next Generation Sonoran Desert Researchers, an organization that connects experts across the border between Mexico and the U.S.
“关于仙人掌的故事，有很多都是恐怖又负面的。”沙漠植物生态学家班·怀尔德说，他是“新一代索诺兰沙漠研究者”的主任，这个组织连接起了美国与墨西哥的专家。
"To me, cacti are such a beautiful story of adaptation to arid environments and all these different strategies of resilience and prosperity."
“对我来说，仙人掌是一个关于适应干旱环境的美好故事，展现了关于韧性与蓬勃生长的种种策略。”
For researchers, cacti now represent a new frontier of survival, one offering surprising lessons that, if harnessed correctly, could be applied to a world far beyond them.
对研究者来说，仙人掌现在就代表着生存的最新疆域，提供了各种惊人的新知，如果能驾驭得当，就有机会运用在仙人掌以外的广阔世界。
