"I didn't know this before, but plants have sex," says Kevin Delin. He's gesturing toward two huge cycads, palmlike fugitives from the Dinosaur Age growing in a corner of the Huntington Botanical Gardens, a sanctuary for 15,000 rare plant species in San Marino, CA. Delin's ignorance of botany is excusable. He's an engineer from NASA's nearby Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and what truly interest him are not the male and female cycads but the pair of "sensor web pods" lodged in the ground under the plants. Each pod is the size of a handheld computer and contains a processor, battery, solar cell, radio, memory, and sensors to monitor heat, humidity, and soil moisture. The pods are the surrogate eyes, ears, and even brains of the garden's curators, keeping track of how much sunlight and rain the plants are getting-critical factors for cycads, which need specific conditions to reproduce.

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