Garden 7 min

Kalmiopsis leachiana

On Bigfoot country, the botanizing Leaches and their donkeys, and a small plant with a long story

Kalmiopsis leachiana is a small, simple, tough-looking and beautiful plant. It has all of the essential DNA of a rhododendron with none of the landscapy garishness so common in the Pacific Northwest.

The vast heathlands of Kalmiopsis that I like to imagine once reigned over the landscape have dwindled to a few relict populations in the Siskiyou Mountains. Preserved and given refuge by those serpentine soils so beloved by Dr. Kruckeberg, Kalmiopsis has persisted in a tough ecological niche. And it's not only plants. If you're a believer, on some quiet ridgeline somewhere in the Klamath Mountains, Sasquatch is loping quietly through the heath.

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