Flowers, not extinct and not innocuous

At University Heights Point today we found another hillside bloom of Mariposa lilies, the Point's harbinger of deep summer. It reminded me that the natural, endemic species really do like it here and will pop up in the most unexpected places, even in the midst of urbanity, steeply set on a hillside with an ocean view. Maybe we will get lucky, like that hiker at Mt. Diablo who found a species of buckwheat thought to be extinct for at least thirty years.


photo by associated press

The photo above is of the eriogonum truncatum, Mount Diablo Buckwheat, found by integrated biology grad student and hiker Michael Park and announced last week. The picture of him on The Human Flower Project's blog post is, in the words of poster Julie, "nearly as heartening as the flower itself"; he looks like a great guy who loves life and already he has found some life we thought was gone forever. Yes, heartening.

Another post in what might be one of my new favorite blogs is intriguingly titled "The Sudden Gardens of Tashkent," which could be about exotic central Asian poetic endeavors but is really about the way that the dictator of Uzbekistan, a fine fellow whom the Bush administration admires and who boils people, uses flower gardens, planted overnight, to repress his citizens. The article ends with a memorable quote that expresses the confused dualities of our existence:

". . . flowers are rarely innocuous or "“mere decoration."” As soon as the trowels come out, we know that human purpose has stirred, whether for liberation or repression."

The lead post for today also has that dualistic, good/evil mix that makes for perceptive, if not easy journalism. Check it out.

ps--they love Allen too.