GARDNERVILLE, Nev. — A botanist gently strokes the pollen of endangered wildflowers with a paintbrush as she tries to reenact nature inside a small greenhouse in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada.
It could take centuries, they say, to know if researchers have successfully found the delicate balance of pollinators, climate, soil conditions and minerals to make propagated Tiehm’s buckwheat permanently viable in the wild. “Because this is an enclosed area, I use the brush in order to pollinate the flowers ... to move the pollen from the male parts to the female parts,” Ovalle told The Associated Press during a recent tour of the greenhouse.
“Someone's got to step up to the plate. It costs money to come up with the protection conservation plan," Rowe said, noting that voluntary efforts by the company have cost about $2 million over the last few years.Ioneer cites the transplanting of a member of the rose family, Robbins’ Cinquefoil, in New Hampshire that helped lead to its removal from the endangered species list in 2002. But critics say not enough time has passed to know if that recovery effort will work.
“However, that is a far cry from transplanting those plants back into the wild. It would be absurd to think that we could take those potted plants and translocate them wherever we wished,” she said.