A large population of these very small & cryptic plants was found (by participant Carl?) late during a wonderful CNPS trip led by Robin Kobaly...who had shown us a more modest pop earlier in the trip (so we had the right search image...i.e. invisible ;-).

I like to call plants like these ''pebble mimics''...though it's a challenge to come up with hypotheses for what sort of selective pressures would drive the evolution of pebble mimicry ;-) I had suggested ''to avoid being seen and devoured by herbivores ''...but that was met by the response: ''There's not much to eat there!''. However, if you're a tiny rodent or a lizard...it would probably be a nice snack. And it would be a feast for a small bug! But they all may have other means beyond vision to locate the plants, so visual pebble crypsis alone might seem insufficient for protection. Then again, sometimes every little bit helps. Suffice it to say, the controversy still rages on over whether ''pebble mimicry'' is a genuine biological phenomenon or simply another playful Aaronian phrase.

An interesting discussion of many taxonomic aspects of this rare and distinctive species can be found in the paper Patterson(1989).