California’s wildflowers are in danger. Photographed by Nita Winter and Robert Badger, the Beauty and the Beast: Wildflowers and Climate Change exhibit demonstrates the importance of California’s diverse ecosystems and the beauty found in the wild.
When I first stepped into the Beauty and the Beast: Wildflowers and Climate Change exhibit at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), my eyes danced across still life of white walls adorned with over 50 vibrant pictures of California’s wildflowers. From a landscape of colorful, dappled slopes to a large portrait of a glowing orange California poppy, the individual beauty of each piece amazed me.
Amidst the breathtaking photos, there were diagrams, drawings and plaques that informed viewers of the labor-intensive process behind the photos as well as their creators, Rob Badger and Nita Winter. Undoubtedly, the individual beauty of each photo captures your attention from the moment your eyes meet the exhibit. Badger and Winter’s main goal is to capture your attention to inspire you to create change.
Rather than show depressing images of what is happening on our planet, we show beautiful images of what remains of the natural world to motivate people to protect it,” Badger said.
Although California wildflowers are beautiful to look at, their main purpose isn’t to decorate the backgrounds of our phones and computers. From the oceanic cliffs of the Pacific to cracked desert sands, each flower plays a vital role in one of California’s 14 ecological regions. However, because of the damage of the wildflowers’ ecosystems in recent years, it’s harder for them to survive now than ever before.
While reading the plaques at the exhibit, I learned that the biggest threats to California wildflowers are climate change and the introduction of invasive species. Due to temperamental weather swings, drier regions such as Death Valley have been doused with an extra dose of water, consequently inviting the introduced species over for more than just a week’s stay. Unlike the flowers of the exhibit, these flowers tend to favor the rain a bit more—to them a slightly damp Death Valley is a home away from home. In colder, more saturated places such as the redwoods, climate change swings by once again to drop yet another problem: rising temperatures. As a result of the warmer temperatures, wildflowers tend to get a bit excited and start to bloom an entire month before they’re supposed to. While the enthusiasm is appreciated, it makes it a bit difficult for pollinators to coordinate with the flowers, and so a rather conflicting schedule is born. If the pollinators can’t catch the early bloomers, extinction and mass extinction will become two possible outcomes for the future.
As I exited the gallery of CSUF’s campus, the two worlds aligned and, I realized that although the Beauty and the Beast exhibit’s time has ended at CSUF, our efforts to protect what remains of our wildflowers should not. As suggested by Winter and Badger through the exhibit, by becoming citizen scientist and making crucial observations about surrounding nature, you can help create data tables for future decisions about our environment. So, if you decide to take a step outside to analyze nature for the sake of our futures, you won’t just be smelling the roses: you’ll be saving them too.