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COPYRIGHT 2003 Natural History Magazine, Inc.
When I first read about Butterfly Valley in an issue of Fremontia, the journal of the California Native Plant Society, I knew I had to see it. The valley's boggy areas, seeps, and ponderosa-pine forests are home to more than 500 kinds of plants. Among them are large concentrations of the insect-eating cobra plant (whose hoodlike leaf bears what looks like a forked tongue); four other species of insectivorous plants (two sundews and two bladderworts); and twelve kinds of wild orchids. Butterfly Valley, through which runs Butterfly Creek, lies in the northern Sierra Nevada mountains and is named for its overall shape, discernible when viewed from mountain heights. A 500-acre portion of the valley, part of California's Plumas National Forest, is designated a Botanical Area, which protects it from wildflower picking and commercial logging.
On a pleasant morning in August my wife Beverly and I set out on California...
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