The Discovery and Naming of Kalmiopsis leachiana

Posted by Jeff on Mar 2, 2016 @ 4:20 am in Conservation | 0 comments | Last modified: March 1, 2016

Celebrate Women’s History Month by reading about Lilla Leach, Oregon botanical pioneer:

The date was June 14, 1930. Botanist Lilla Irvin Leach and her husband John, a Portland pharmacist, were descending a ridge in the Siskiyou Mountains of Curry County, Oregon. With them were two pack burros, Pansy and Violet. The four had camped the night before at a small glacial lake on a bench near the summit of Pearsoll Peak, about 11 miles west of Selma at the boundary of what is now the Kalmiopsis Wilderness.

It was a hot day and the trail was a steep one through rugged country. They had traveled several miles on the bare ridge when they came to a place where the hogback widened out and became Gold Basin, a high plateau with scattered pines. Lilla later described the next moments as follows:

“I was in the lead where I usually walk in order to get the first chance over the burros to anything of interest that might be growing, when suddenly I beheld a small patch of beautiful, low growing, deep rose-colored plants. Because of their beauty, I started running and dropped to my knees… I had never seen anything so beautiful before. John came and started taking pictures while I examined the plant with a hand lens. I believed it was new.”

Lilla Leach always spoke of the discovery of Kalintopsis as her most exciting experience and the thrill of a botanists lifetime. In an interview almost a quarter of a century later. Lilla again described her discovery of the new plant: “I suppose there must have been a little depression in the ridge there, a sort of saddle for moisture to gather in and soil to accumulate, for there beside the trail was a patch of evergreen bushlets simply covered with deep rose-colored flowers, vividly pink in the sun. The patch was about 30 feet square, at a rough guess. Thrilled? We certainly were! I felt sure it was something new. It looked like Kcarnia poltfolia, but it wasn’t. 1 thought it might be a new Kalmia.”

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