Gypsophyma reficiens根組みなおし

Within three days of the first rain, the pale violet flowers begin opening on the leeward side of the gypsum hills. Small solitary bees sometimes visit in daylight, but the pollen dries into a fine dust and appears able to reach stigmas on the low wind between cushions. When the capsules split, they do not cast seed far. The gypsum-coated, heavy seeds drop into narrow cracks beside the parent plant, which may explain why colonies follow the white ridges in broken lines.

The peculiarity of this plant is almost entirely lost if only the visible shoots are collected. Its white root caps appear for only a few days after hard rain, when the gypsum margin has dissolved and retreated. Once dry, they are buried under powder of the same color; if excavated, the fragile gypsum framework collapses with them. In a pressed specimen it remains merely a small gray-green cushion, easily filed among known gypsophile plants.

The sheep tracks avoid the shoulders of the white hills and keep to dark gravel bands leading toward old wells. My guide would not cross the gypsum slopes after rain, saying that if the exposed roots were stepped on, the hillside would split the following winter. This seems less a taboo than a rule learned from unstable margins. Because the cushions remain in the same positions for years, herders may have used them as small markers of a hill’s firmness.