Boulder work
The Virginia Rockbreaker gets its common name from what appears to be an odd way of crafting a habitat: look fast at the plant's location and you might be fooled into believing that it had cracked open boulders and churned stone into soil. Not so, of course. Micranthes virginiensis takes advantage of earlier arrivals, starting with the lichens that can dissolve rocks. The mosses follow, and, eventually—the process can take decades—the decay and natural compost makes for a layer of soil. It's thin, but it does the job for this member of the Saxifrage family—Saxifrage means "rock breaker"—which, with a bit of warmth finally in the air, had begun to put on its annual show.
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© Bruce Fellman