For those who rarely search for anything beyond a misplaced set of keys or a cellphone, the life of a botanist might look impossibly poetic: combing through fields of wildflowers or perusing mossy riverbanks in search of elusive plants with names like handsome sedge and rough false pennyroyal. The whimsical image fit when the state of Vermont announced last month that a plant thought to be extinct there — false mermaid-weed — had been found through a chain of events that seemed stolen from a fairy tale. It began with a sharp-eyed turtle biologist for the state, Molly Parren. She had been out surveying the habitat of wood turtles in rural Addison County on May 7 when she spotted some wild meadow garlic, which is extremely rare, beside a stream. Ms. Parren snapped a photo and sent it to her colleague, Grace Glynn, Vermont’s state botanist.

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Persons: —, Molly Parren, Parren, Grace Glynn Locations: Vermont, Addison County