textless:textless:There aren’t a ton of plants in the Bisti Badlands, and the starkness is part
textless: textless: There aren’t a ton of plants in the Bisti Badlands, and the starkness is part of what makes the area so otherworldly. But when we visited the first week of April, I saw these small, sparkly plants that I’ve never seen before. There were hundreds of them growing in cracks in the mud, and at first glance they seemed almost metallic. But when I took a closer look at the leaves, the texture was more like tiny jewels. Update: We really wanted to know more about these, so inlandwest sent the pictures to the BLM, which manages the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness. They forwarded the question to the agency’s State Botanist/Ecologist for New Mexico. She noted that it is hard to identify baby plants (which hadn’t occurred to me, but certainly makes sense), but said that they look like Atriplex saccaria, a kind of saltbush. If they are part of that family, the little hairs, or jewels, are salt-filled. So interesting! -- source link