Globemallow

I plucked a sprig of orange globemallow from Cross Hollow this morning. The area has a paved road, a paved bike path, and a view of the Walmart parking lot. (I like to pick through the rocks and weeds sometimes to look at the broken bottles from the pre-Walmart period when Cedar City residents used the canyon for target practice.) In any case, I brought the globemallow home for Ellen's plant guide. It is a plant so common in southern Utah that I consider it a weed, but we needed a specimen for the book. (You can see it growing thickly along the trail in this picture.)

The funny thing is that Ellen picked her own sprig last week but was unable to bring it home. She was visiting the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in the San Rafael Swell last weekend when she stooped to pluck a flower. Before she could get out the door with it, however, she was accosted by the staff and had the globemallow forcibly confiscated. She was told that no one was allowed to take anything from the site.

Um? Are we in Utah? Is this the BLM? Has something changed? Having a little trouble with a sense of proportion, are we? Is this the same agency that is known as the Bureau of Livestock and Mining? Is this the source and location of most of our nation's natural gas wells? C'mon. This was a kid carrying a weed. Do you go home, in your smart BLM uniform, and smugly gloat about having saved the world from a first grader carrying a dandelion?