One of the world's rarest plants grows in the Presidio. Plans are under way to save it — and ax thousands of trees in the process.
...The mythical endangered plant you'd hack through the jungle to behold in a Hollywood adventure film would be a 12-foot tiger-striped behemoth with orchid-like flowers as wide as dinner plates and tureen-sized pitchers capable of digesting large rodents.
Raven's manzanita, however, stands roughly shoulder-high to a Barbie doll. Past battles with a fungal pathogen have left it with several unsightly brown patches. Just inches off the ground, its dime-sized, round leaves ripple in the constant Pacific wind while its delicate, pearl-white flowers dangle like inverted wine glasses. Its gnarled red branches are no thicker than pick-up sticks. It's not what you would call ... majestic. When viewed from afar, it's rather unremarkable — except for the fact that it's the last of its kind....
Read the full article in the Chronicle
chuck b. at My Back 40 (feet) and MMW from Two Gardens had it second and first, respectively.
Maybe if we look away, we won't be able to see extinction. Remember the Hoffmeier's antelopes I wrote about?
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