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PROVO, UTAH (AP) -- On a steep shale slope in Spanish Fork Canyon are the only known specimens in the wild of one of the rarest plants in the world, clay phacelia.
Only 40 plants were found in surveys this year.
An eight-foot fence was erected by The Nature Conservancy on 70 acres the group purchased to protect the plants by keeping out humans, deer and elk.
On a recent visit, Denise Van Keuren, ecologist with Uinta National Forest, discovered that one plant that she had photographed recently had been smashed, perhaps by a sliding rock, while a new plant, the size of a quarter, had emerged from the talus.
Botanists at the Rocky Mountain Research Station Provo Shrub Lab at Brigham Young University campus hope to save the species by raising new plants from seed.
Susan Meyer of the Forest Service has managed to raise 54 clay phacelia from 600 seeds.
Getting the seed needed to expand the population from Meyer's laboratory plants has been a challenge. The plants grew faster than anticipated and threatened to flower before insects were available to pollinate them naturally.
"I managed to keep the plants cool enough to delay flowering until I could put them outside to get natural pollination," Meyer said in an e-mail to Van Keuren.
Meyer found that regular honey bees ignored the plants.
However, Meyer cultivates a bee species at her home called blue orchard bees.
"We decided to put (the plants) inside the enclosure with our blue orchard bee nest boxes," Meyer said. "It's working great. ... The blue bees are all over the phacelia all the time."
Meyer's plants have produced 1,000 seeds so far this year.
"I'm estimating that we'll get somewhere around 15,000 to 20,000 seeds out of this," she said.
Botanists plan to sow some of that seed directly onto the shale slopes this fall, hoping they sprout next spring, Van Keuren said. Laboratory seedlings could be planted next year.
Clay phacelia was discovered in 1883 at Pleasant Valley Junction. Plants have never been found again in this location, but a second group was found in Spanish Fork Canyon in 1894, Van Keuren said.
The plant was forgotten until it was rediscovered by BYU botanist N. Duane Atwood in 1971. In 1978, the plant received protection under the Endangered Species Act because so few exist.
Perhaps because they are biennials, populations of the plant fluctuate drastically and unpredictably, Van Keuren said.
"In 2004 it was a very good year and we saw about 200 plants, 100 blooming and 100 seedlings," she said. "None of the seedlings made it through the winter."
Forty plants this year may sound dangerously small, but "there have been some years they have searched the entire plot and only come up with 10 plants," she said.
The effort to save the plant "goes down to biological diversity and the value of retaining our natural heritage of species," Van Keuren said.
"If we keep losing species, we simplify our natural ecosystem and make the ecosystem more susceptible to some kind of catastrophe. Granted, clay phacelia may seem a small part of the whole thing but if you start unraveling the ecosystem, you can lose it over time," she said.
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Information from: The Daily Herald, http://www.heraldextra.com
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
