Professor Steven Clark is on an ongoing quest to find a rare daisy that helps us understand the intricacies of evolution.

Professor Steven Clark spends his days bushwhacking brushy trails until they turn into rocky scrambles, then vertical cliffs. It’s arduous work in service of a unique goal. He’s searching for the Columbia Gorge daisy, a rare flower that only grows in the trickles of water and tiny pockets of dirt in the wet, cliffside crevices of the Columbia River Gorge.

You may or may not be the kind of person who goes to this kind of trouble to find a flower. And this flower is not even particularly beautiful or environmentally consequential, as far as modern science is concerned. But for Steven Clark, this flower is about as special as any in the world.

For this episode of Crosscut Escapes, Clark and Crosscut video producer Sarah Hoffman slog through the woods and scramble up to a ledge in the middle of a waterfall in order to count a few tiny, rare flowers as part of a larger research project documenting rare plants in the Pacific Northwest.

Their journey provides a deeper sense of just how beautifully complex the natural world is — and the importance of each tiny piece of the evolutionary puzzle to make a thriving whole.

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Credits

Host/Co-producer: Ted Alvarez

Co-producer: Sara Bernard

Music: The Explorist

Executive Producer: Mark Baumgarten