abominable mystery

The aptly-named Professor Richard Buggs of Kew Gardens (previously) believes that researchers may be on the cusp to solving the above-named puzzle that Charles Darwin confessed to fellow explorer and scientist Dr Joseph Hooker in an 1879 exchange addressing the unaccountable evolution of the higher plants in recent times to include such apparently rapid innovations as flowers that could undermine his theory and the observed gradual process in the rest of the living world. Though perhaps closer to resolving the unconscionably quick rise of the angiosperms (blossoming species—some two-hundred-thousand in total), the conundrum, which some critics take as evidence of divine intervention, yet defies a full explanation albeit less vexing and cause for awe and appreciation of Nature.