 The following is a production of New Mexico State University. If you're ever in Grand Canyon Country, take the time to travel south to the Arboretum at Flagstaff. I did just that and learned about some rare endangered mountain flowers from Dr. Joyce Michinsky, Director of Research. Dr. Michinsky, are there any endangered species here that we should know about? Well, yes, there are. We have some right in front of us. Beautiful. This one is an endangered plant. This is the Holy Ghost Diplomopsis. It's an endangered species that grows in a canyon east of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Oh, wow. It's beautiful. Thanks, yes. You look like something people would want to go collect as a cut flower. Well, in fact they do, and that's one of the things that's causing it problems in the wild. This plant has some reproductive problems, and so every flower that occurs in nature really is needed in order for it to set enough seed. So it doesn't make very many seed on its own? No, it doesn't. And its populations are declining over the past eight years. That's a shame. I noticed this other plant here. That's the Sunset Crater Penstemon. It's a forest service sensitive species, which is a different classification of protection. There is the Endangered Species Act, which has endangered and threatened species listed, and also our land management agencies have their own categories for plants that they have concerns about. And this one has populations in the Sunset Crater area. It's a beautiful plant, too. Is it available for Southwest gardeners? Actually, this plant is. Plants of the Southwest has this plant in propagation. They were able to do that because they collected seeds before it became classified as a rare species. Normally, you wouldn't be able to have a rare species in your own garden. So this is not something we can go out and collect from the wild now, but we can buy this particular one? That's right. Do you have any examples of threatened species here? Yes, we do. We've got the San Francisco Peaks Ground Sill, which is growing right over here. Let's go take a look at that. All right. It goes right over here? Yes. This is the San Francisco Peaks Ground Sill, which grows on the top of our local mountain range, the San Francisco Peaks. It's beautiful. And it's the only place in the world where that grows. Only place? Only place. And that was why it was listed as a threatened species. So if the volcano blew... That's really threatened. Yes. And we still can't collect this plant, but you can. That's true. The Arboretum and several other gardens that are part of the Center for Plant Conservation Network collect these rare species, not only to have them on display for our visitors, but also to put their seed into long-term storage at the National Seed Storage Lab in Fort Collins. I'm really glad you're doing that, and thank you for giving us a tour of these endangered plants here. Thank you. The preceding was a production of New Mexico State University. The views and opinions in this program are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the NMSU Board of Regents.