Reward offered for plant sighting

SALEM – Scientists are offering$100 to anybody who can lead them to a plant that may be extinct in Oregon, at least in its native form: the golden paintbrush.

The plant was found in the Willamette Valley. It grew in flat prairie and poked up like golden candlesticks in the grasses.

But the last time botanists recorded it was in 1910.

Scientists think the plant lost out to agriculture and housing. They’d like to reintroduce the plant using native seeds.

“The likelihood of finding more populations is pretty darn low,” said Ted Thomas, a senior ecologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “That is not to say that on one of those gigantic farms, tucked away in the back corner, in an area that they haven’t grazed or converted or plowed, that maybe there is a patch out there.”

The plant blooms in May and June with yellow, flowering stalks.

It stands 6 to 10 inches tall, and its leaves can be various colors because its roots draw nutrients from other plants.

The federal government lists the plant as threatened, and it is on Oregon’s endangered species list.

Native populations are found in only 11 small areas in Canada and Washington state.

Scientists have been experimenting with seeds from Washington state, and they’ve planted a patch at Baskett Slough National Wildlife Refuge, in Polk County about 10 miles west of Salem, part of research done by Oregon State University graduate student Beth Lawrence.

But they’d prefer to use Oregon seeds if they can find them because they may be better suited to the habitat.

The Corvallis-based Institute for Applied Ecology put up the reward. Tom Kaye is the director, and potential sightings can be reported to Tom Kaye at tomappliedeco.org.