A yellow-flowered California native plant that has rarely been seen for 68 years has been rediscovered in Vasco Caves Regional Preserve in eastern Contra Costa County.  

The caper-fruited tropidocarpum (Tropidocarpum capparideum) was found on March 3 by botanist and environmental consultant Heath Bartosh. Bartosh was searching for the plant on local ridgetops for the East Contra Costa County Habitat Conservancy when he and his colleague rediscovered the endangered species. 

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.