The flame-colored blooms of the Ethiopian red hot poker grow around mountain-rimmed meadows, as high up as 13,000 feet above sea level. The dry season snuffs out the poker's flowers, leaving the plant parched and yellow. But in the rainy season, the plants first regrow their spiky leaves, then their towering stem, and finally their red-hot flowers. "They look like hundreds of fire torches covering the landscape," Sandra Lai, a senior scientist at Oxford University's Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Program, or EWCP, wrote in an email.
When Lai first joined the program, her colleagues told her she had to taste the nectar of the Ethiopian red hot pokers. Locals know and love the nectar, swirling it into coffee or smearing it on kita, Ethiopian flatbread. Children don't even bother with such preparation, instead licking the nectar straight from their fingers. "It is very, very sweet, quite sticky," Lai said. "Like watered-down honey."
Watching the wolves in the field required patience. The wolves live in close-knit family packs and defend their territories, where they forage for rodents emerging from the ground. Fields of red hot pokers grow in the territory of certain packs. But seeing the wolves requires driving out to the flowers, hiding out in a car and waiting to see if a wolf decides to come, Lai said.
Collection
[
|
...
]