At the other end, by the time the first rays of morning sunlight pierced the canopy and fell upon the ground, the team was already packed and ready to depart.
Before setting out, Professor Cadwell gathered all the members as usual for a brief safety briefing, once again emphasizing the importance of maintaining visual contact with one another and reporting their positions regularly while working in the wild.
Then came the usual lecture about protecting the environment—carrying out any waste they produced in plastic bags and the like.
By the time Tierra idly poked at the campfire, Professor Cadwell had already led the team about half a kilometer into the Central Grand Oasis.
With dense shrubs, vines, and towering trees covering the ground, they moved far more slowly than they had in the desert, especially since they needed to collect samples at any moment.
As they ventured deeper, Professor Cadwell and the others first came upon a vast stretch of ferns. The vegetation here was fairly lush but not particularly tall, forming a green sea beneath their feet.
These ferns drew the researchers' attention with their distinctive growth patterns and forms. Their leaves were broad, with slightly wavy edges, and their smooth green surfaces gleamed with a metallic sheen beneath the sunlight.
"Remarkable." Professor Cadwell bent down and gently pinched one of the fern leaves. "Very few plants develop such reflective structures in their leaves, yet they appear here. Professor Skylar Ashley's paper studied this aspect. Plants typically evolve reflective structures as part of a survival strategy—perhaps to attract pollinators, protect themselves from excessive direct sunlight, deter herbivores, or, in certain cases, lure prey."
"Of course, in this case, protection against sun damage is more likely. The precise reason will require analysis alongside the hydrological distribution of the groundwater resources