She’s out to save rare wildflowers, but first she must find them
The white Toyota Tacoma bumped along the dirt track, up and down hills, scratching the sides of the truck with a high-pitched whine. Naomi Fraga, her hair in pigtails under a polka dot cap, drove like a slightly more cautious Indiana Jones, guided by an old map.
She stopped the vehicle on a perch overlooking an expanse of boulders and Joshua trees in eastern Kern County, about 170 miles northeast of Los Angeles.
“This is exactly where they should be,” she said.
Dr. Fraga, 43, was on a treasure hunt, but not for gold or jewelry. She scoured the desert for delicate flowers so small they’re called “belly flowers,” because botanists have to sit on their bellies to get a good look at them.
This winter’s relentless rain brought blooms to profusion all over California this spring, delighting residents with vibrant colors in places like the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve, where visitors line up to take selfies with the displays. After unusually wet periods like this, species emerge that have not been seen in years.
For dr. Fraga, a botanist at the nonprofit California Botanic Garden in Claremont, presents an extraordinary opportunity this spring to document the existence of rare plant species so they can be saved from the brink of extinction.
This stretch of Central California, where the Sierra Nevada Mountains meet the Mojave Desert, was once part of a vast, pristine landscape. Billions of microscopic seeds lay dormant in the top layer of the earth for years, even decades, until the conditions were just right to emerge as wildflowers.
Historically, spring has been characterized by a dazzling variety of flowers in the West, each suited to its particular environment. (California, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, is home to at least 2,400 rare plant species.)
Over time, farms, homes and off-road vehicles have wiped out stretches of rare plants – a hill here, a meadow there. Climate change has changed when, where and how much it rains. Even in places where carpets of wildflowers still bloom in wet years, crowds can jeopardize their future.
So this spring and summer, Dr. Fraga and other rare plant biologists in an exciting race to find wildflowers before they disappear again.
The botanists’ ultimate goal is to give the most endangered plants an endangered or rare species. That could lay the groundwork to legally force land managers to make accommodations for endangered species. (The Center for Biological Diversity, for example, has made protecting wildflowers an important part of its long fight against the development of the Tejon Ranchwhere nearly 20,000 new homes have been proposed north of Los Angeles.)
To get endangered or rare species designations, Dr. Fraga and her colleagues first prove that the plants still exist. Dr. Fraga may be the only person equipped to do that for the plants she studies, said Katie Heineman, a vice president of the Center for Plant Conservation.
“Without her, there would be no knowledge of that plant species in the whole world,” she said. “It’s what drives conservation action: people who are fully trained to watch these plants in the field.”
During this trip, Dr. Fraga was looking for a species known as the Kelso Creek monkey flower, with blossoms that are half golden yellow and half rich maroon.
“We all have our pet species,” said Dr. Fraga. “I wish we could do more. We keep talking about the extinction crisis, but we only know if things go extinct if you keep an eye on them.”
Dr. Fraga sees the widespread acceptance of habitat destruction in California as something of a slippery slope. Each flower represents millennia of evolution. If we accept the extinction of an obscure monkey flower she worries, where will it end? And what consequences could there be for disrupting complex ecosystems?
Every spring, Dr. Fraga and her fellow conservationists, including amateur botany enthusiasts who use apps like iNaturalist, to document as many rare plant populations as possible.
Scientists must plan carefully to find targets in bloom. If they arrive at a location hours early, the flowers may still be in their buds, making them more difficult to study. If they arrive too late, the flowers may already have shriveled from the heat.
Dr. Fraga came into contact with monkeyflowers after encountering a scientific career she never thought she would have.
Her father, a Mexican immigrant who worked as a truck driver, thought she should become a kindergarten teacher after being the first in her family to attend college. But at age 20, a mentor — also a Mexican-American woman — took her on her first hike, hunting for a rare herb. Her feet ached from her ill-fitting boots, but she was hooked. Dr. Fraga later felt the thrill of discovery; she has found five new types of monkey flower.
As a Latina, Dr. Fraga pioneered a field long dominated by white men, dating back to the 1700s when European settlers traveled the world building collections of exotic plant species, many of which are used by scientists today. (The oldest specimen in the collection of the California Botanic Garden dates from 1750.)
“It’s a complicated legacy,” she said, pausing for a moment at a patch of purple owl’s clover, a native wildflower.
Later on the trail, Dr. Fraga clusters of buttery desert dandelion and scale buds, and hurried past rows of pale cream cups. Insects buzzed and lizards darted across her path.
She suddenly stopped. “Oh my God! A hybrid!” she cried.
A Kelso Creek monkey flower had somehow crossed with a rock jasmine monkey flower, another nearby species. She had never seen one in real life. She stopped to take the picture plant and make detailed notes about its characteristics.
“Actually, you’re coming with me,” she said, after seeing another one. She carried the plant back to the truck, where she pressed it into the pages of the Claremont Courier.
But Kelso Creek’s monkey flower, her target for the day, still proved elusive. She frowned, perplexed. “This is good habitat,” she said.
She met three of her students nearby and the group formed into two trucks. They splashed through the khaki-colored Kelso Creek, after which the flowers are named, to check another location where Dr. Fraga had seen a small bloom of a few hundred plants the year before.
Across the creek, they saw a field that from a distance looked like green undergrowth and cacti. But as they approached, the botanists stared in amazement: a sea of small plants with yellow and maroon flowers rolled before them. There were millions, the group later estimated.
“It’s a micro-superbloom!” gasped Courtney Matzke, 35, one of the students.
They had finally found their flowers. The afternoon sun went down.
It was time for Dr. Fraga and her students to get to work.