ERIKA ALIN

Come late June, encrusted saxifrages reach moon-white flowers up from crevices on cliff faces and outcrops on the lake’s northern shore. The flowers rise from quarter-sized rosettes with stiff, fleshy leaves rimmed with white crusts made of evaporated lime-rich waters. The rosettes grow in cushions that conserve moisture and deflect the wind and, if threatened with drying out, can curl their outer leaves inward to reduce evaporation and shade the young leaves in their centers.1

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In addition to setting seed, encrusted saxifrages can spread by producing new plants from the base of existing plants and the ends of ground runners.2 Tiny rosettes often squeeze up between larger plants and hug the margins of cushions. Only a minority of rosettes actually flower each summer, and those that do die after setting seed.3 Each cushion exists in a continuous state of formation, birthing and joining rosettes that live to reproduce and shelter their kin before ceding their place to a new generation of plants.