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I am probably the only person on FR who has restored substantial patches of Clarkia (not the Pismo flavor). It's a lot of work, but it beats assessing these people for $165 grand to feed a claque of bureaucrats without growing a single plant. The 2500sft patch below (photo taken in late June 2015) took about 11 years to develop from seed I collected from a single specimen along the County road. Virtually all of that work where I sowed it was weeding, 5-7 times a year that demands being able to recognize tiny weeds only a few millimeters tall, or to distingush grass species before seed appears. I promise you, there aren't five people in all of the Caifornia Native Plant Society that can do that. Maybe none. In other words, what these thugs want to see is something they don't know how to do themselves.

Every blade of grass you see here is native (almost all Bromus vulgaris). The grand mountain dandelions are Agoseris grandiflora, and you should see those with dew on them, as they're unbelievably gorgeous. Before the Clarkia comes up is a crop of native clover (Trifolium wildenovii). There is also a mix of Madia exigua in it too. In other words, for these plants to express this kind of beauty demands understanding and redeveloping an entire plant community that is beyond the technical capability of most of the zealots in CNPS!

Given the illegitimate regulatory environment these landowners face, they would have been better served had they started growing some in anonther location on their property. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not into forcing anybody to do something that demanding. I am saying that CNPS and the bureaucrats are doing more damage to native plant habitat with this heavy-handed approach. Helping people grow the stuff and learn to appreciate what they moved into the area to enjoy works better. Had the eco-NAZIs approached the situation rationally, the plant would not be rare.

In this case, grading could actually be advantageous to Clarkia, as long as they're willing to weed it aggressively. It's exotics that are the usual threat to this plant, not soil disturbance that can actually help it.