CLAY-LOVING BUCKWHEAT IS A NON-ISSUE! 

THERE IS ONLY A 120-160 ACRE AREA IN THE GGNCA THAT IS PROTECTED AND, ACCORDING TO BLM UNCOMPAHGRE FIELD OFFICE PERSONNEL, THIS AREA CAN BE SPANNED BY A POWER LINE.

 

                                                    

Clay-loving Buckwheat

Eriogonum pelinophilum

     Eriogonum pelinophilum is known only from Delta and Montrose counties, Colorado. It is related to E. clavellatum and both species occur on Mancos shale. The two are well-separated geographically. Eriogonum pelinophilum is a smaller plant than E. clavellatum in habit. The perianth lobes of E. clavellatum are distinctly dimorphic with those of the outer whorl fan-shaped and about twice the width of those of the inner whorl. In E. pelinophilum the lobes are essentially similar, with those of the outer whorl no more than a third broader. Much of the former habitat occupied by E. pelinophilum has been destroyed in the Montrose, Colorado, area since the species was listed as endangered in 1984. A small population is preserved at the Fairview Natural Area east of Montrose. Ants actively pollinate the flowers, being involved with both self- and cross-pollination. Some 50 additional visitors were found associated with the flowers, but none was confirmed as a pollinator.

 

Conservation groups and the state government raise money to buy 43 acres of The Wacker Ranch in Montrose, Colorado, to preserve dense habitat of clay-loving buckwheat. See article below.

 

http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=17138

 

“Biologists know little about clay-loving buckwheat”, according to article above.

 

What is Buckwheat?  What is it used for?  Does it create jobs?  What animals eat it? Why is protecting “clay-loving Buckwheat” being considered over protecting the farmers and other property owners who have made Montrose their home, some for three generations or more, and who have created the environment which suddenly is so desirable to outsiders?  Are people moving to Montrose because of the buckwheat growing on the BLM or on other people’s private property?  The BLM Uncompahgre Field office personnel could not answer these questions.  Montrose City and County officials cannot answer these questions. 

 

In our work on the problem DMEA and the City and County of Montrose has caused, we finally ran across some folks who fully appreciate Buckwheat -  The Wackers of Montrose and some conservation groups.  Thank goodness!  Now the Buckwheat will survive on 43 acres that is off limits to the public and development. Whew!

 

Seriously though, as best we can tell, it is not a cure for cancer, it does not create jobs or food for the poor, and it does not pay property taxes or utility bills. Local Cowboy author and Historian Howard Greager, was born in Placerville and has lived his entire life in Norwood.  When he was told that utility lines could not go through the BLM because of Buckwheat, he looked completely baffled and then he laughed, wholeheartedly. 

 

Here are some of the obvious facts with respect to Buckwheat:

It cannot be terribly valuable and endangered if dirt bikers rip indiscriminately through the BLM where it grows, every weekend.  If the areas growing Buckwheat are truly worthy of protection, then some part of the BLM should be set aside as wilderness and made off-limits to recreation, especially ORV’s, as the BLM has done with the spectacular Harquahala Wilderness Area between Phoenix and Quartzsite.  BLM lands not so designated should be available to be used for public good.  How can the BLM feasibly maintain that the publicly-owned adobe hills are off limits to power lines but open to dirt biking and not worthy of wilderness-area status?  Perhaps a more relevant question is why DMEA has not asked these questions, publicly and loudly, in the interest of accomplishing their mission statement.  Is the answer, again, that DMEA is taking the fastest, but not best, route as the result of their failure to foresee what the execs at DMEA get paid to foresee? 

 

Taxonomic Treatment of Eriogonoideae (Polygonaceae)

http://www.life.umd.edu/emeritus/reveal/pbio/eriog/erioeucy/eriopeli.html

ERIOGONUM Michx.

James L. Reveal

Professor Emeritus,
Norton-Brown Herbarium, University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland 20742-5815, U.S.A.

9. Eriogonum pelinophilum Reveal, Great Basin Naturalist 33: 120. 1973 • Clay-loving wild buckwheat

Plant low, heavily branched subshrubs, 0.5-1(-1.2) × 0.8-3(-4) dm, floccose to glabrous and grayish. Leaves basally cauline, solitary; leaf-blades oblanceolate, 0.5-1.2(-1.5) × 0.01-0.2(-0.3) cm, densely white-tomentose abaxially, subglabrous to glabrous and green adaxially, tightly revolute; petioles 0.05-0.1 cm. Flowering stems numerous, erect to spreading, 0.05-0.1 dm. Inflorescences cymose, compact, 0.01-0.2 × 0.1-0.3 dm; bracts 3, scalelike, 0.5-1 mm, triangular. Peduncles, when present, erect, 0.1-0.5 cm, floccose to glabrous. Involucres solitary, narrowly turbinate, 2.5-3.5 × 1-1.5 mm, floccose to glabrous; teeth 5, erect, 0.3-0.4 mm. Flowers cream, (2.5-)3-3.5 mm, glabrous; perianth lobes essentially monomorphic, oblong, 0.8-1.2 mm wide, united 1/2 their length. Stamens slightly exserted, 2.5-4 mm; filaments sparsely pilose basally. Achenes trigonous, light brown, 3-3.5 mm, glabrous.
     Flowering spring-summer spring-summer (May-Jul). Heavy clay flats and slopes in saltbush communities; 1600-1900 m; wc Colo. - see map (yellow boxes are extant populations; red crosses are populations presumed to be extirpated).

County Listings:

COLORADO: Delta and Montrose.

 

One property owner did some research on Buckwheat . . . .See Full comment in link, Property Owners Speak Out.htm

 

“I've been doing some research on this plant and what information I have found describes the plant as being endangered, however, it is not protected by any Colorado law.  There is a proposal from 1988, which was titled "Final Plan" and just makes suggestions as to how the plant should be protected.  But a suggestion is not a law. I love plants, (I'm a master gardener in Jefferson Cty.) and the environment as much as anyone, and hate to see our native flora and fauna face extinction.  However, a plant is not more important than the lives, health, and futures of people.  It is also a plant which thrives best in disturbed soil.   It is unlikely that the plant would be eradicated by power lines or even a road.  Grazing would be more

harmful, and that is not at issue here.   I was also told by Kent (Davenport) that some environmental group had purchased land on the BLM to save the buckwheat, but so what?  We purchased our land, as well, and we

actually intended to live on it, enhance it, and contribute to the community.

 

I'm not sure if the information I have on the status of the buckwheat is the most current, but is what I could find.  I don't see how the county can use it as an excuse not to build further east, if there really is no law in place to protect it.

 

My sources of info on the buckwheat are:

Fish and Wildlife service-code of Federal Regulations: vol.49, #136 and

Clayloving Buckwheat Recovery Plan - 1988

 

The Recovery Plan not only discusses the buckwheat, but the fact that the adobe land (as barren as it may seem to some, has an understated beauty noticed by actually spending time on it) should also be protected.  This would include all of our homes and farms and ranches.”