clipped from: www.newscientist.com   
Could flowers bloom on icy moon Europa?
The Arctic Poppy and other high-latitude flowers have parabolic shapes to focus sunlight on the reproductive parts at their centres. Physicist Freeman Dyson says such plants might evolve on other worlds as well (Image: Ansgar Walk)
The Arctic Poppy and other high-latitude flowers have parabolic shapes to focus sunlight on the reproductive parts at their centres. Physicist Freeman Dyson says such plants might evolve on other worlds as well
I would say the strategy in looking for life in the universe [should be] to look for what's detectable, not what's probable
Specifically, he says spacecraft should look for flowers – similar to those found in Earth's Arctic regions – on icy moons and comets in the outer solar system.

"We have a tendency among the theorists in this field to guess what's probable. In fact our guesses are likely to be wrong," Dyson said. "We never had as much imagination as nature."

If plants spread to smaller, more distant objects in the solar system's two cometary reservoirs, the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud, they would be less subject to gravity and could easily grow in size to maximise solar collection, Dyson said.