By a Stream in Vermont, a Glimpse of a Plant Last Seen a Century Ago
“Are you sitting down?” Vermont’s state botanist asked a fellow plant expert after spotting false mermaid-weed last month.
NYT gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/11/u...smid=url-share
For those who rarely search for anything beyond a misplaced set of keys or a cellphone, the life of a botanist might look impossibly poetic: combing through fields of wildflowers or perusing mossy riverbanks in search of elusive plants with names like handsome sedge and rough false pennyroyal.
The whimsical image fit when the state of Vermont announced last month that a plant thought to be locally extinct — false mermaid-weed — had been found through a chain of events that seemed stolen from a fairy tale.
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