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The buzzy burr, at its heart, is a stowaway.

The dandelion shows us how important plants and their seeds are to the animals around them, but the buzzy burr proves that the opposite can also be true: many seeds rely on animals for their survival.

This buzzy burr’s story starts right here, on Shearwater. It’s a flowering plant, and it looks pretty similar to a dandelion, actually, only its flower is less delicate, more wiry, and a dark-purple color, while its seeds aren’t attached to flying propellers that carry it on the wind. No, the buzzy burr’s seeds are hooked like talons. They don’t fly—they cling. They grab. And they particularly love to clutch onto feathers.

This spiky little seed, you see, is a world traveler, or would like to be. And who better to hitch a ride with than the mighty wandering albatross itself?

The buzzy burr seed, compelled to spread, to propagate, to live on, grabs onto the albatross with its hooks, and one day, when the albatross is ready to leave its chick, it lifts into the air with its impossibly wide wings, wider than any other bird’s, and it sets off on an immense journey around the south of the globe. This albatross doesn’t just circle the globe once, carrying the seed and showing it long stretches of ocean, showing it the world. No, it circles the globe three times in a single year. Only on this third trip around does the albatross set down on the coast of Argentina, in the alpine reserve among its glaciers and fjords, and deposit the seed into its new home.

Maybe the albatross knows it carried this little life across continents, across oceans. Maybe its long flight this year was to show the seed as much as it could. Maybe now it says live well, little flower , as it lifts back into the air on its wide and snowy wings.

Maybe the seed says thank you , as it watches the bird fly away.