Making A Comeback

Making A Comeback. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. A rare but beautiful flowering plant is making a comeback in Southern Oregon as a collection of groups and agencies work to keep it from going extinct. It has a unique name and is almost exclusively found in a small area near the city of Jacksonville, Oregon. Biologist Kelly Amsberry with the Oregon Department of Agriculture says Gentner's fritillary, an endangered plant species, is the subject of an intense recovery plan. AMSBERRY: It was listed in 1999 in response to threats including habitat loss and habitat destruction due to weeds, and a variety of other factors. It's important to take action now so that we can reverse the trend toward extinction and get the species back to a viable state. ODA is involved with a project to take bulblets from existing plants, grow them out in a greenhouse, and replant them in protected areas around Jacksonville. AMSBERRY: It's a new project, so a lot of the plants are quite young. But we seem to be doing very well with up to 70 percent of the transplanted plants recurring one year after transplantation and up to 30 percent after three years. To date, more than 13-thousand bulbs have been transplanted. Meanwhile, Jacksonville has adopted Gentner's fritillary, named after the local family that discovered it back in the 1950s, as its signature flower. An annual festival and organized hikes to see the showy red flower have brought in wildflower lovers from around the world. Amsberry describes the endangered plant, Gentner's fritillary. AMSBERRY: Well, it's a showy red lily about two feet tall. It can have up to 15 flowers. It's really a dramatic looking wildflower and that's why it's been so popular here in Jacksonville as their signature plant. That is it's a showy one that is recognizable in the field and is unique to the area. ODA plant biologist Rebecca Currin praises the efforts of the local non-profit organization, the Jacksonville Woodlands Association, for being a key force in protecting the endangered plant, especially when it comes to providing protected sites for its recovery. CURRIN: They've written grants to purchase land and to treat weeds within the land, and have actually gone out and done on the ground surveying for plants, monitoring of plants, and site maintenance and improvement. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.