One of a Kind

	About this picture: I was in an area on our farm called “The Grove,” a place that has never gone “under the plow.” I arrived before dawn with my camera to take pictures of wheels for this issue. I was getting some great shots when I looked down and found myself surrounded by about a dozen ladyslippers (the rare Cypripedium montanum). I knelt down and started taking pictures. – MaryJane “Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.” – George Washington Carver

From the Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute newsletter, Fall 2003

Imagine yourself transported back in time, hundreds of years. Your time machine lands in the middle of a Palouse micro-forest. Amidst the waving bunchgrass and wildflowers, there is a diverse array of vegetation that amazes you.

For better or for worse in 2003, the bunchgrass and wildflowers have given way to our houses, farms, yards and roads. Less than one percent of the native habitat in the Palouse region remains intact. The Palouse is the native grasslands between the forests of Idaho and the deserts of Eastern Washington characterized by unique, dune-shaped hills of fertile loess soil. One of the largest pieces of remnant Palouse vegetation is the Magpie Forest, 14 acres near Moscow, Idaho.

For years, the Magpie Forest sheltered two extremely rare Palouse wildflowers, the ladyslipper orchid and the Palouse milk-vetch.

However, the Magpie Forest could soon look like any other hilltop in the area. The land is privately owned, and the developer has begun to section and sell lots for houses adjacent to the forest, but has agreed to sell the forest to the Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Organization, if the money can be raised to buy it. A minimum of $100,000 is needed to buy it and about 1/5 of the money needed to purchase the Forest has already been raised. For more information, contact Tom Lamar at 208-882-1444, or visit www.pcei.org.