ABOVE: An image of Astragalus nitidiflorus submitted to the citizen science platform iNaturalist that has yet to be verified by taxonomists. The species was officially recorded as extinct but was recently rediscovered.
© NANOSANCHEZ, INATURALIST
Around four decades ago, the late botanist Walter Scott tramped up a hillside that was destined to be quarried and plucked a few yellow flowers from the rocky slope. He took the plants home and, in an effort to save them from extinction, raised them in well-drained wooden trays. Scott’s foresight to preserve Hieracium hethlandiae (F. Hanb.) Pugsley, a hawkweed whose stellar flowers might be mistaken for dandelions by the untrained eye, went apparently unnoticed by the broader botany community.
As the hillside habitat gave way to a road, H. hethlandiae was declared extinct by the UK’s National Biodiversity Network and in some scientific reports. But the plant is very much not extinct. Although Scott’s attempts ...
