SUNFLOWER FIND A REAL SURPRISE PLANT WAS LONG-THOUGHT EXTINCT.

Byline: Kathleen Sweeney Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - The Los Angeles sunflower recently found along the banks of the Santa Clara River is just as much a mystery to the people who found it as it is to the experts who have spent decades looking for it.

It stands 10 to 12 feet tall, but droops with the weight of the flower, which is no larger than an apple. It is part of the giant sunflower family and grows in mossy, wetland areas. The perennial species that spreads by underground rhizomes blooms from August to October.

It was thought to be extinct since 1937. Until earlier this month, no one had seen it.

The flower's recent discovery on property of the The Newhall Land and Farming Company west of the Golden State Freeway now has experts anxious to catch a glimpse, steal a root to start other populations and step up conservation and protection efforts.

``It's big news,'' said Michael Wall, seed program manager at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden. ``It's really exciting. When something is gone and comes back, it's always good news.''

A biologist working for Newhall Land discovered the plant earlier this month in an area of riparian habitat on the proposed site of the 21,700- home Newhall Ranch development project.

The company sent the species to the University of California at Berkeley to verify it was the Los Angeles sunflower, and then petitioned the state Department of Fish and Game to list the rare flower on its endangered and threatened plants list, a request that could take the state a year to complete.

The little that is known about the species, which is also called Helianthus oliveri and Helianthus parishii, tells a story of how the plant was threatened with extinction a century ago because of development.

In 1903, Anstruther Davidson, a founder of the Southern California Academy of Sciences, wrote that the sunflower's habitat - swamps - were fast being drained in the interest of ``civilization.''

``In the process of clearing by burning the tules, the tubers of the Helianthus readily perish in the conflagration. In a few years, it will be totally extinct here,'' Davidson wrote. ``In the old Kurtz St. Marsh, in the city, a large number grew, but the filling up of the marsh necessary to the extension of the railway yards has completely exterminated them there.''

Nearly 30 years later, Phillip Munz of the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden was questioning why the plant wasn't being discussed in ``restoration conversations'' of various urban wetlands projects taking place around Southern California.

Today, experts blame the development of strip malls, the concrete that now covers the Southern California's rivers and lack of conversation on its extinction.

Loren Rieseberg, professor of biology at Indiana University, said he spent several years in the early 1990s searching Los Angeles County for the flower, but doesn't know much about the species.

It was never known to be used by any American Indian tribe like the common sunflower, and it went extinct before anyone had time to study it, he said.

Rieseberg, like many other biologists throughout the country, is awaiting the DNA testing of the plant to learn more about the species, he said.

While they wait, he suggests the community take an active role in protecting the plant. Newhall Land officials said it will not be affected by any development on the property.

``It's really quite wonderful that it's shown up,'' Rieseberg said.

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3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2 -- color) A biologist working for Newhall Land discovered the Los Angeles sunflower - thought to be extinct since 1937 - earlier this month along the banks of the Santa Clara River. The Los Angeles sunflower grows 10 to 12 feet tall, but droops with the weight of its apple-size flower.

(3) The long-thought extinct Los Angeles sunflower has been found alive and well along the Santa Clara River, near the proposed Newhall Ranch housing development.

David R. Crane/Staff Photographer