This summer, biology Professor Matt Ritter solved a botanical mystery with a paper he published in the journal “Ecology.” Ritter, working with an arborist in Australia, discovered that the Cook pine, distinctive for its trademark lean, seems to be constantly reaching toward the equator. The Los Angeles Times profiled Ritter and his discovery in a June feature titled, “The case of the leaning pine tree: A natural history mystery unfolds on the Central Coast.”

Read the Los Angeles Times story here.