6 Plant Species to Be Granted U.S. Protection

Six rare plants clinging to life on mountainsides ringing the Los Angeles Basin will be granted protection under the federal Endangered Species Act, officials said Wednesday.

The plants include the Braunton’s milk-vetch, a mauve-flowered herb that springs up after wildfires and is known to exist in only four areas in the world: Orange County, Monrovia, the Upper Santa Ynez Canyon of the Santa Monica Mountains and the Simi Hills in Ventura County. Fewer than 300 plants are now growing, a federal botanist said.

Environmentalists said such listings are badly needed in Southern California, where development has overtaken much of the native habitat.

“It should have been done ages ago,” said Connie Spenger of Fullerton, who has championed protection of the Braunton’s milk-vetch in Coal and Gypsum canyons near Anaheim.

Experts said the Endangered Species Act offers much weaker protection for plants than it does for animals, and that even the force of federal law may not save many of the plants on private land.

On public lands, however, it will offer new means of protecting the plants and their habitat, said Tim Thomas, botanist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which announced the listings.

Braunton’s milk-vetch and the yellow-flowered Lyon’s pentachaeta are being listed as endangered, meaning they are in the most danger of extinction. The other four plants, all rock plants known as dudleyas, or live-forevers, are being categorized as threatened. They are: the marcescent dudleya, Santa Monica Mountains dudleya, Conejo dudleya and Verity’s dudleya.