The white Toyota Tacoma bumped alongside the grime path, up and down hills, brush scratching the perimeters of the truck with a high-pitched whine. Naomi Fraga, her hair in pigtail braids below a ball cap, drove like a barely extra cautious Indiana Jones guided by an historical map.

She stopped the car on a perch overlooking an expanse of boulders and Joshua timber in jap Kern County, about 170 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

“This is right where they’re supposed to be,” she mentioned.

Dr. Fraga, 43, was on a treasure hunt, however not for gold or jewels. She was scouring the desert for delicate blooms so tiny that they’re known as “belly flowers,” as a result of botanists should get down on their stomachs to get a correct have a look at them.

This winter’s relentless rain produced a bounty of flowers throughout California this spring, delighting residents with vibrant coloration in locations just like the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve, the place guests have lined as much as take selfies with the shows. After unusually moist spells like this, species emerge that haven’t been seen in years.

To Dr. Fraga, a botanist with the nonprofit California Botanic Garden in Claremont, this spring affords a rare alternative to doc the existence of uncommon plant species in order that they is perhaps saved from the brink of extinction.

This swath of Central California, the place the Sierra Nevada mountains blur into the Mojave Desert, was as soon as a part of an enormous, untouched panorama. Billions of microscopic seeds lay dormant within the prime layer of earth for years, even a long time, till circumstances had been precisely proper for them to emerge as wildflowers.

Historically, spring has been marked by a blinding number of flowers throughout the West, every suited to its specific atmosphere. (California, some of the biodiverse locations on the planet, is residence to no less than 2,400 uncommon plant species.)

Over time, farms, properties, and off-road automobiles have chipped away at patches of rare-plant habitat — a hillside right here, a meadow there. Climate change has shifted when, the place and the way a lot it rains. Even in locations the place carpets of wildflowers nonetheless bloom in moist years, crowds can imperil their future.

So this spring and summer season, Dr. Fraga and different rare-plant biologists are in an exhilarating race to search out wildflowers earlier than they disappear once more.

The botanists’ final objective is to safe endangered or uncommon species designations for probably the most threatened vegetation. That can lay the muse to legally pressure land managers to make lodging for threatened species. (For occasion, the Center for Biological Diversity has made wildflower safety a key piece of its prolonged fight against development of the Tejon Ranch, the place virtually 20,000 new properties have been proposed north of Los Angeles.)

In order to get endangered or uncommon species designations, Dr. Fraga and her colleagues should first show that the vegetation nonetheless exist. Dr. Fraga stands out as the solely particular person outfitted to do this for the vegetation she research, mentioned Katie Heineman, a vice chairman of the Center for Plant Conservation.

“Without her, there would be no knowledge of that plant species in the entire world,” she mentioned. “It’s what drives conservation action: Having people who are fully trained looking at these plants in the field.”

On this journey, Dr. Fraga was searching for a species often known as the Kelso Creek monkeyflower, with blossoms half golden yellow and half wealthy maroon.

“We each have our pet species,” Dr. Fraga mentioned. “I just wish we could do more. We keep talking about the extinction crisis, but we only know if things are going extinct if you keep track of them.”

Dr. Fraga sees the broad acceptance of habitat destruction in California as a sort of slippery slope. Each flower represents millenniums of evolution. If we settle for the extinction of 1 obscure monkeyflower, she worries, the place may it finish? And what penalties may there be for disrupting complicated ecosystems?

Each spring, Dr. Fraga and her fellow conservationists, together with novice botany fanatics who use apps like iNaturalist, attempt to doc as many uncommon plant populations as they’ll.

Scientists should meticulously plan to search out targets in peak bloom. If they arrive at a location hours too early, the flowers may nonetheless be ensconced of their buds, making them more durable to review. If they arrive too late, the flowers might have already shriveled within the warmth.

Dr. Fraga homed in on monkeyflowers after stumbling upon a science profession she by no means thought she’d have.

Her father, a Mexican immigrant who labored as a truck driver, thought she ought to turn out to be a kindergarten instructor after she was the primary in her household to attend faculty. But at age 20, a mentor — additionally a Mexican American lady — took her on her first hike, to hunt for a uncommon herb. Her toes ached from her ill-fitting boots, however she was hooked. Dr. Fraga later felt the fun of discovery; she has discovered 5 new species of monkeyflower.

As a Latina, Dr. Fraga is a trailblazer in a discipline lengthy dominated by white males, courting to the 1700s when European colonists traveled the world and constructed collections of unique plant specimens, a lot of that are utilized by scientists right this moment. (The oldest specimen within the California Botanic Garden’s assortment dates to 1750.)

“It’s a complicated legacy,” she mentioned, pausing close to a patch of purple owl’s clover, a local wildflower.

Later on the path, Dr. Fraga scanned clusters of butter-colored desert dandelion and scale bud, and hustled previous strains of pale cream cups. Insects buzzed and lizards darted throughout her path.

She stopped instantly. “Oh my god! A hybrid!” she cried.

A Kelso Creek monkeyflower had someway crossed with a rock jasmine monkeyflower, one other shut species. She had by no means seen one in particular person earlier than. She stopped to {photograph} the plant and take detailed notes about its options.

“Actually, you’re coming with me,” she mentioned, after recognizing one other one. She carried the plant again to the truck, the place she pressed it between pages of the Claremont Courier.

But the Kelso Creek monkeyflower, her goal for the day, was nonetheless proving elusive. She frowned, perplexed. “This is good habitat,” she mentioned.

She met up close by with three of her college students, and the group consolidated into two vehicles. They splashed via the khaki-tinted Kelso Creek, for which the flowers are named, to verify another location the place Dr. Fraga had seen a small bloom of some hundred vegetation the yr earlier than.

Across the creek, they noticed a discipline that, from afar, appeared like inexperienced scrub and cactuses. But as they approached, the botanists gazed in astonishment: a sea of petite vegetation with yellow and maroon flowers rolled forward. There had been thousands and thousands, the group estimated later.

“It’s a micro-super bloom!” gasped Courtney Matzke, 35, one of many college students..

They had lastly discovered their flowers. The afternoon solar bore down.

It was time for Dr. Fraga and her college students to get to work.