A rare yellow-flowered California plant unseen since 1957 has been rediscovered

Representative Image of a long-lost California wildflower found again after decades (AI-generated image) A small, yellow-flowered California native plant that had not been documented in nearly seven decades has been rediscovered in the hills of eastern Contra Costa County. The caper-fruited Tropidocarpum, last recorded in 1957, was found on March 3, 2025, by botanist Heath Bartosh of Nomad Ecology and his colleague Spencer Adams, working on behalf of the East Contra Costa County Habitat Conservancy. The discovery was made on protected land within Vasco Hills Regional Preserve, acquired jointly by the East Bay Regional Park District and the conservancy, and comes after a deliberate, sustained search for the plant rather than a chance sighting.How botanists rediscovered a flower missing for nearly 70 yearsAccording to East Bay Parks' own account of the discovery, Bartosh was specifically searching local ridgetops for caper-fruited tropidocarpum when he and Adams located the population, work carried out on behalf of the East Contra Costa County Habitat Conservancy. The search was prompted by an earlier sighting of a few individual plants on nearby private land in 2023, which gave bota...