On Friday, I felt like the earth was one butterfly and one flower away from death, and showed you an image of a single butterfly larva on a single yellow bell… on the brink of extinction. On Saturday, I was heartened to find a colony of yellow bells farther up the hill … still highly endangered (the area is slated for house-building), but, somehow twenty plants is a far better feeling than one, even though it is still a long way from 20,000. Here are the beauties (you can open the image in a new window for a better look) surviving in the invasive cheatgrass and the remnants of a bunchgrass and balsam root community.
Go Yellow Bells, Go!
May the butterflies find you.
There is hope. Small hope, but hope nonetheless. My spirits are lightened. Yours, too, I trust.
Categories: Endangered species, Gaia, Grasslands, invasive species, Nature Photography
