Source: Karen Chavez, ASHEVILLE CITIZEN-TIMES, 9/18/19


Don’t be deceived by their delicate, buttercup-like petals. Spreading avens are one tough piece of mother nature, growing out of cracks in the highest mountain cliffs in the Eastern United States, uniquely adapted to the rarified air and geology of the Southern Appalachians. But although the pretty yellow flowers, have weathered about 10,000 years of snow and ice, freezing rain and brutal winds, they are now some of the rarest plants on the planet, due in part to the overzealousness of curiosity-seeking humans, and the slowly choking tentacles of climate change.

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