Day 238: About half a mile in, the Rimrocks trail begins a short, slow climb which opens out into a bald covering roughly 1200 square feet. The soil is thin, bedrock showing through in several places, and yet it supports a small plant I've seen nowhere else. One of yesterday's goals was to see if "the pink thing on the bald" was in bloom. Pink thing? I was scraping my memory for the name. As I came up the incline and a pink haze of four-inch tall flower stalks came into view, I said aloud, "Plectritis? Hmmm...now why did that word spring to mind? Plectritis? I'm not sure that's right, but why am I thinking it?" I took the requisite pictures for a Penny Perspective, and then kept going, muttering "Plectritis?" to myself every now and then until I had reached my chosen turn-around a mile further on. The climb to the top of the bald is steeper coming back the other way, although still very short, and as I mounted it, the words "Plectritis congesta" fell from my lips. Even so, I still wasn't convinced that the Latin applied to this particular plant, but when I got home, it was a simple matter to verify that my aging memory was indeed intact by checking my blog. It's been three years since I had to pull those words out of my mental database. Known commonly as Sea-blush, what's this species doing so far inland?
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