Posted on 05/24/2005 7:52:23 AM PDT by SmithL
A wildflower that had not been seen in nearly 70 years and was thought to have vanished from the face of the Earth has been rediscovered on Mount Diablo.
The elusive Mount Diablo buckwheat, which looks like a small, pink version of the baby's breath used in floral arrangements, had been for decades the number one search target for East Bay botanists and plant enthusiasts.
"It's been the Holy Grail of the East Bay," said Barbara Ertter, curator of western North American flora at the University of California's Jepson Herbarium. "It's the one plant that grows only on Mount Diablo and had been thought extinct."
That changed when Michael Park, a University of California graduate student, found one. He subsequently counted more than a dozen of the little plants in a remote area of Mount Diablo State Park.
"It's holding on by its fingertips," Ertter said. "We've got this chance now, but it's still so precarious. We have this chance to bring it back from the brink of extinction."
The discovery, made two weeks ago, was kept secret to all but a handful of people until now.
"It's tremendously exciting news," said Pamela Muick, executive director of the California Native Plant Society. "In a place that's so highly developed and recreated (in), we're still finding rare plants -- plants that haven't been seen since 1936. That's an incredible thing."
The buckwheat has long been officially considered "presumed extinct," but many botanists continued to hold out hope that it would reappear because there was always the chance that its seeds were out there somewhere, ready to sprout.
On May 10, Park arrived at Mount Diablo to continue plant surveys he has been doing for three years when his cell phone rang. It was his professor, Bruce Baldwin, the curator of the Jepson Herbarium.
Park, 35, told his professor he would be looking that day for the Mount Diablo buckwheat, adding that he thought it still existed but that he doubted he would be the one to find it.
Baldwin told his student to be patient. Finding a rare plant, he said, was a matter of being in the right place at the right time.
An hour or so later, Park would become the first botanist for nearly 70 years to see Eriogonum truncatum, or Mount Diablo buckwheat.
On a recent day, Park took a handful of visitors to the site so that potential threats to the plant could be evaluated. The Contra Costa Times attended on condition it not reveal the exact location due to concern that people seeking out the plant might trample it or otherwise damage its habitat.
"The key break was when I was up there and decided to break my usual route," Park said, pointing toward the edge of some chaparral. He decided that day to circle the chaparral in the direction opposite to his normal route.
"I came around this corner and I saw these pink puffballs," Park said. "It dawned on me, this was something forgotten.
"I put my bag down and said, 'Wow. It's a buckwheat. This could be cool.' That's when I went into shock, right after that thought."
What followed was a swirl of overwhelming and profound emotions: excitement, disbelief and denial.
He started running through plant characteristics in his head, trying to prove that what he had found was not the plant he thought it was.
He couldn't. Finally, he was sure he had found a plant that was presumed extinct.
But he didn't have his camera to prove it. He returned with his camera two days later, keeping his mouth shut about his discovery.
"I couldn't go around telling everybody about what I found. The privacy of the plant is the important thing. It seemed to me it could be loved to death," Park said.
He showed the photos to Ertter, who confirmed the plants were, indeed, the long-lost buckwheat.
Experts said the long rainy season might have something to do with the rediscovery of Mount Diablo buckwheat, but they could not be sure because so little is known about it.
"It's damn hard studying the ecology of an extinct plant," said Ertter, who set Park on his survey work a few years ago. The university's herbarium has continued to fund his work.
Ertter suggested the plant might do best along the edges of chaparral, where brush rabbits taking refuge in the scrub browse on and clear grassy weeds that might otherwise overwhelm the buckwheat.
Ertter, a top expert on California plants, is the co-author of a new, 2002 edition of the definitive book on Mount Diablo plants, "The Flowering Plants and Ferns of Mount Diablo, California," with Mary Bowerman, the botanist who last saw the Mount Diablo buckwheat in 1936.
Bowerman, who wrote the original version of the book in 1944, is also a co-founder of Save Mount Diablo.
"It's an indication of why it's important to protect lands like this," said the Save Mount Diablo's president, Malcolm Sproul.
The area where the plant was found was added to the state park in recent years.
Brian Hickey, superintendent of Mount Diablo State Park and other parks in the region, said park officials might weed around the buckwheat plants or take other steps to reduce any threats to them.
"It's a wonderful find," Hickey said. "We have to figure out now how to best protect it."
Since the site is far from roads and trails, new trails are unlikely to be built in the area. One possibility is harvesting seeds from the plants to grow at a botanical garden.
A more specific management plan will be developed, Hickey said.
Meanwhile, East Bay botanists are elated.
"When something like this happens, it's just extremely uplifting and awe-inspiring," said Muick, the native plant society director. "You realize that nature still has secrets we don't understand."
Three plants exist only on Mount Diablo and nowhere else in the world. They are:
Mount Diablo buckwheat
Mount Diablo bird's-beak
Mount Diablo jewel-flower
Eight other plant species occur almost exclusively on Mount Diablo but extend to other nearby places.
The 'Holy Grail' found on 'Devil's Mountain'? What the hell? In heaven's name, can this be true?
"OTAY, OTAY, YOU FOUND ME!"
So much for hiking in that park. Humans not allowed so a flower can be brought back from the brink of extinction. Which leads me to ask: It was thought extinct, it's not now, how has life changed? If it was extinct again, who would notice - besides Michael Park?
Interesting that all these birds, salamanders, plants are now being "rediscovered". Sounds like more chances of land grabs and putting public land off limits to the public.
First they found that bird down South, now this buckwheat has reappeared. I fully expect that somebody will find both Jimmy Hoffa and a flock of Passenger Pigeons within the next 5 years.
related anecdote:
Beal, a botanist at Michigan State University in the 19th c (I believe) started an experiment. He buried twelve mason jars containing representative samples of common weed / wildflower seeds. Each ten years he'd dig up a jar and see how many would germinate. After his death, the secret burial location was preserved, and circa 1980 the last of the jars was opened (the longest botanical experiment in history, if memory serves). Over 40 per cent of the seeds germinated, despite the passage of 120 years.
:')
Did the wheat seeds from King Tut's tomb germinate?
I think that's a popular myth, and grew out of (so to speak) the old "mummified wheat" scam that Arab tour guides used to pull at the Pyramids. They'd plant (so to speak) wheat kernels in various nooks and crannies, then tell the marks, er, tourists, that "mummified wheat" is sometimes found around the monuments. Turned into a big Easter Egg hunt.
Someone I went to college with told us about finding "ancient dice" in a crack in the Coliseum. He did the old chewing gum on a stick method to retrieve them, and claimed that he still had them. I immediately suspected that these "ancient dice" were the same kind of stunt by Italian tour guides.
Emmer Wheat from Tut's tomb:
http://whyfiles.org/219everyday_archeo/
http://whyfiles.org/219everyday_archeo/images/wheat.jpg
Does it look like it would germinate? :')
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