Virginia Museum of Natural History opens unique traveling exhibit featuring rare American wildflowers

For award-winning photographer Maryl Levine, capturing illusive blooms on film was no simple task. Maryl, as she is known professionally, tells the full story of her efforts to photograph threatened or endangered species of flowers in the spring issue of Virginia Museum of Natural History’s Virginia Explorer magazine.

As she describes the difficulties she encountered while searching for the rare flowers, Maryl talks about battling everything from raging rivers to fire ants. She waded through swamps, one of which claimed some of her equipment, and climbed into precarious positions on windy ledges.

"I was flying and driving continually from one site to another. There was no time to lose. There was no flexibility. every day endangered plants were blooming in different areas around the country, and I was obsessed with getting to as many as I could, as fast as I could," she wrote.

The result of that obsession is now on exhibit as Wild Beauty: America’s Rare Flora at the Virginia Tech branch of the Museum of Natural History in Blacksburg, April 4-May 30. From there, the exhibit travels to Martinsville, VA, for showing June 3-July 30. Wild Beauty, which will tour for a five-year period, opens with the work of Maryl Levine. Her photography has appeared in National Wildlife, Nature Conservancy and National Geographic. In 1998, her photographs from this exhibit will be shown in the American Museum of Natural History.

Later, the works of other prominent wildflower photographers, writers and scientists such as Ken Stein, marian Lobstein and Hal Horowitz will be showcased as the exhibit continues to travel.

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