One of the world's oldest science experiments comes up from the dirt

It's one of the world's longest-running experiments, having already gone on for 142 years

On Thursday morning, several hours before sunrise, Marjorie Weber arrived at a rendezvous spot on the campus of Michigan State University. Three of the school’s other plant scientists were already there, waiting in dribbling snow. As they stood around blowing on their hands, the fifth member of their crew, Frank Telewski, “emerged from the darkness with a shovel slung over his shoulder,” Weber said.
 
With everyone else crowded around, Telewski, the group’s leader, pulled out a copy of a map from 1931, drawn like an architectural blueprint. It would guide them to a botanist’s version of buried treasure: A