Topic: "Buckwheat Breathes" (2)
A 36 year-old graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, conceptually, causes apoplectic fits for some people. "Professional student" Michael Park was doing research on Mount Diablo, a 3900 foot peak just east of San Francisco, last year when he found a plant no one had observed since it had been declared extinct in 1936. The Mount Diablo buckwheat was discovered in the same park where conservation groups brought the peregrine falcon back from near-extinction in 1989. In fact, 12 of the 650 plants which occur in the park are found nowhere else on our small blue planet.
Frodo was rather taken by the ecological significance of Mount Diablo and the state park of the same name. It seems that the park squats at the nexus of two small mountain ranges and the San Francisco Bay. The park has an unusual "blend" of rocks, soils, and growing conditions according to local scientists. Frodo was immediately sensitive to the words "blend" and "San Francisco" used to describe these environmental conditions. Perhaps Frodo exhibited a little too much of his natural cynicism.
The Mount Diablo buckwheat has been successfully grown both in the laboratory by artificial means and by natural propagation in the little patch where it was discovered. Seed has been collected and can be kept in storage for as long as 100 years. A preventative is thereby created to offset the danger of a natural, i.e. earthquake, disaster or a man-made screw-up like an errant campfire. All the bases have been covered to ensure that the Mount Diablo buckwheat only goes to extinct status one time.
Frodo has never seen Mount Diablo, but he is very familiar with much of the Southern Appalachians, home to the most diverse grouping of plants anywhere. There are probably 650 different plants in Frodo's front yard at Lake Lovey, dwarfing the entire botanical population of the Mount Diablo park. The difference may be that the University of California, Berkeley, sits next to Mount Diablo and it seems to produce students of nature and mankind. The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, sits near Lake Lovey, and they hope to go to the Peach Bowl this year, and to sing "Rocky Top" until they turn orange.
Funny how some people define "values," isn't it, dear reader?