Click the puzzle for a full-size version.EMILY COX AND HENRY RATHVON

Botany is the art of insulting flowers in Latin and Greek.

—French journalist, novelist, and horticulturist Alphonse Karr (1808-1890), for whom several plant species were named, as quoted in the 1960 book Les noms de plantes

The climate problem is the most important problem we currently have on this planet. Given all the arguments that people have against genetically engineering plants combined with the urgency of the problem, should we use this engineering?

—Salk Institute plant biologist Wolfgang Busch, whose group is researching ways to edit plant genomes to store more carbon and weather drier, hotter climatic conditions, speaking with San Diego State University public broadcaster KPBS (January 3)

ACROSS
© Victoria Roberts/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank7.    Largest member of the oceanic dolphin family
8.    Nitrogenous substance once thought to cause
       food poisoning
9.    An organ’s outer layer: Latin for “tree bark”
10.  Sound from a chinchilla, mouse, or guinea pig
11.  Folkloric shapeshifter or lycanthrope
13.  Producer of hips
15.  Bioluminescence
17.  Allergic rhinitis (2 words)
19.  Controlled substance with a morphine-like
       effect
21.  Alloy of tin and copper
22.  Barrier breached by osmosis (2 words)
23.  Location of the metacarpals

DOWN
1.    Living high, like lemurs and sloths
2.    Layer between a planet’s core and crust
3.    Kind of predator 7 Across or 5 Down
       represents
4.    Musca domestica
5.    Cat spotted in rainforests
6.    Andean speaker of Quechua
12.  Connected with snakes
14.  Symptom of 17 Across
16.  Descriptor of an ancient mammoth
18.  Geologic spans larger than ages
20.  Exfoliation treatment in a spa
21.  Having no hair apparent?

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