Secrecy employed to protect flower
TACOMA (AP) -- Washington's rarest flower -- Hackelia venusta, or showy stickseed -- grows nowhere else in the world.
The last remaining specimens in the wild -- more than 600 at last count -- cling to the steep, rocky slopes of a Cascade Mountain canyon, above the Wenatchee River in Central Washington.
Federal officials added showy stickseeds to the list of plants protected under the Endangered Species Act two years ago and at the same time refused to map the 2- to 3-acre site where it grows.
Ted Thomas, the Lacey-based U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service ecologist who prepared the listing documents, said he decided not to identify its precise location to safeguard the flower.
Botanists trying to save the stickseed said they don't want other people to know where it grows because they don't trust others to keep their hands off.
The showy stickseed doesn't stand out when it's not in bloom, but when it does, its inch-wide white flowers can be stunning, said Carr. Together, the blossoms resemble phlox.
"You don't call attention to something that's rare. It brings out the lust in people," said Sarah Reichard, a University of Washington conservation biologist.
To learn more about that obsession, Reichard suggested reading, "The Orchid Thief," Susan Orlean's book about a Florida plant dealer arrested for poaching.
Ed Guerrant, a botanist who works for the Berry Botanic Garden in Portland, said the Endangered Species Act listing in itself sometimes turns plants into targets of malicious destruction. He said he knows of two places in Oregon where landowners purposely bulldozed out populations of rare plants, apparently because they resented the prospect of land-use restrictions.
Botanists first labeled the showy stickseed rare more than 30 years ago. But scientists don't know what accounts for its decline or why it is only found in one place, Reichard said.
The flower, which belongs to the borage family, grows on sunny slopes blanketed by heavy snow in winter. Historically, the area was regularly scorched by wildfires, but fire suppression over the past hundred years has allowed trees to fill in, Carr said. To conserve the flower and reduce the shade, four years ago workers cut down more than 35 nearby trees.