Free Ancient Places by Jack Nisbet Page B

summer droughts that have long limited vegetation across the region. The compact size of many species, such as the salt and peppers, enhances their ability to flower very soon after leafing out in thespring. Low growth habits and the lack of a central protruding stem protect the delicate leaves from buffeting winds, and keep them close to a relatively warm layer of air near the ground. Narrow leaf segments, often sliced to minute fineness, provide more surface area for photosynthesis in dry conditions. Multiple dense flower heads, with male and female flowers present on the same plant, allow for both outcrossing and self-pollination by insects or wind. The smaller species quickly complete their reproductive cycles before the rocky soils lose their moisture during the inevitable summer drought. Fruits mature rapidly into winged seeds that dry up and sail away on afternoon winds. Finely cut leaves and stout stems desiccate in a matter of days until they too disappear. Underground, many of these
Lomatiums
harbor tuberous roots in a wonderful variety of shapes and sizes. These tubers store nutritious carbohydrates during tough winter conditions, then send that essential energy aboveground in the spring to support flowering and seed production.
    Because most
Lomatiums
come and go so quickly, any attempt to understand them must persist through many successive springs. A year after our first salt and pepper excursion, Pam Camp suggested that I travel to the heart of the Columbia Basin, along the base of Saddle Mountain’s long spine. There, amidst an extensive talus slope that tumbled off the central ridge, I would find a most unusual species of biscuitroot. But if I wanted to see it in bloom, she suggested that I get going soon.
    A pair of basalt knobs standing as sentinels directed me to the place easily enough. The massive rockfall they guarded looked dauntingly steep, with only an occasional clump of serviceberry or syringa to indicate that there might be any soil to anchor a small plant.
    “They’re living right in the rocks,” Camp had told me. “And keep climbing—they’ll be further upslope than you think.”
    The boulders at the bottom of the slope were refrigerator-sized, forcing me to keep my eyes squarely on my feet as I spider-walked uphill. The cracks between the big boulders penetrated many layers down. After hopping a hundred yards or more, I crossed a stream of smaller fist-sized rocks that rolled beneath every foothold. I moved on through a wilderness of scree that continued to slip in a slow-motion avalanche. I saw no greenery at all within this constant motion until, only a few inches beyond one of my outstretched hands, a cluster of leaves materialized, tatted into lacework so fine that they looked like fuzzy gray-green kitten paws against the dark basalt.
    More of the paws appeared above and below me. Rocks obscured most of their flowers and stems, but I eventually found some purple blooms with yellow anthers—colors that mirrored the crusty lichens washing across the basalt walls on either side of the talus slope. Many of the blossoms were already aging into an even deeper purple, camouflaged as if they meant to sink into the dark shadows of the scree. This was obviously the strange new biscuitroot, Hoover’s desert parsley (
Lomatium tuberosum
), that Pam Camp had sent me in search of.
    The fact that any of these plants could keep their heads above the shifting rockslide long enough to send up flowering stems seemed like a miracle, and a look into some of the cracks revealed several kitten paws partially crushed beneath tumbled stones. Gently rolling away rocks, I teased out one swollen potato-shaped tuber, the obvious source for its Latin species name of “knobby.” Its broken tip hinted at a much longer serpentine body that slithered deep into the hidden talus world. This severed portion would remain buried, safewithin the turmoil, ready to send up leaves the next spring. Hoover’s desert parsley