Rare beauties: some of the nation's loveliest native plants are also among its most endangered

National Wildlife, Dec-Jan, 1996 by Michael Lipske

Some of the nation's loveliest native plants are also among its most endangered

Maryl Levine's odyssey began on a soggy spring day in Texas in 1992. The Maryland photographer waded across a rain-swollen river and then crept up a cliff by way of a muddy, narrow path. At the end of the path, she saw that the endangered plants she was searching for--Texas snowbells--were (a) utterly drenched and (b) well beyond range of her lens. Then Maryl (who goes by her first name) had an insight: "I said to myself, 'If photographing U.S. endangered plants had been easy, others would've done this project long ago.'"

In the next five months, Maryl traveled to 20 states, capturing on film with only natural light 35 of the country's most beautiful and rarest native plants while they were flowering. "Getting to the remote habitats of these species when the flowers were open and the sun was shining was more difficult than I ever imagined," says Maryl, who endured biting insects, dangerous sink holes and blistering heat to create "Rare Beauty," an exhibit of endangered-flower portraits that has toured science museums across America since 1993.

"It's worth anything I have to go through to get the photos," says Maryl, whose images are displayed on these pages. "I feel privileged just to have seen these plants." Privileged because the more than 100 species of endangered flowers she has now photographed since 1992 are so rare and for the most part so well hidden that only a few botanists will ever see them growing in their natural habitat.

Maryl's portraits may provide the last chance for us to see some of these plants. Much of America's native flora is in serious decline, and many species hang on only because of heroic efforts by professional and volunteer conservationists. The Nature Conservancy estimates that 4,945 species--about one-third of America's flowering native flora--are in some measure of peril.

The reasons for this situation are obvious: habitat destruction, over-collecting and introduction of more-aggressive alien species of plants and animals have all helped threaten American flora. However, plant conservationists also point to a public relations problem. Most people, including those who allocate dollars for conservation efforts, find it difficult to appropriate funds for Texas snowbells or other endangered plants when wolves and whales and other high-profile animals also need help. That "heavy taxonomic bias" exists, says Hawaii-based Gary Ray, an ecologist with the Center for Plant Conservation (CPC), even though plants represent 57 percent of the more than 950 U.S. species currently on the Endangered Species List.

"A small percentage of the biota of the world is getting a very big piece of the conservation effort," says Larry Morse, chief botanist at The Nature Conservancy. And that, he adds, just isn't fair: "Plants make up the vegetation and produce the oxygen that everything else depends on. Without plants, we wouldn't have all those animals that a lot of people are interested in."

Botanists like Morse and Ray believe we should care more about plants and preventing their extinction. They point out that many endangered plants are relatives of valuable food crops and so should be saved for research to develop new strains of food for people. In addition, a high percentage of the top medicines prescribed last year were derived from plants. Experts warn us that genes vanishing with today's plant extinctions might have held clues for creating tomorrow's cures for cancer and other diseases. We need all plant species, says Morse, because "the diversity of plants gives us future possibilities we haven't yet explored."

We also need plants because they make flowers. Blossoms, always fair and sometimes rare, grace our world with color, form and fragrance. That many of America's threatened and endangered plants are so beautiful was incentive for Maryl to produce her photo portfolio.

Long an avid gardener, Maryl began taking close-up photos of cultivated flowers several years ago. She was an accomplished flower portraitist by the time the Houston Museum of Natural Science invited her, in April 1992, to exhibit her work. Maryl proposed a show of the nation's most beautiful endangered flowers. When her first 35 species went on display a year later in Houston, more than 1 million people visited the exhibit.

To find the rare flowering plants, Maryl worked with botanists throughout the country. "In many cases, these plants only survive in small areas," she says. For instance, her first photographic targets, Texas snowbells, cling to life only on limestone ledges and cliff faces at two locales in southwestern Texas. Such cliffs may be among the only places snowbells can still sprout without being eaten by browsing deer and other animals.

Maryl also photographed the black lace cactus, another Texas endangered species. Over-harvesting by cactus collectors helped make the plant endangered, along with habitat destruction from agriculture and oil and gas development. So intent was Maryl on photographing the single cactus bloom she found, she ignored the insects that were fiercely biting her: "I had bites up to my waist by fire ants," she says. "I still have scars from the experience."