Man Completes 30-Year Project to Catalogue Every Wildflower on His Street

Retired civil servant Donald Rootstock has completed a 30-year survey documenting every wildflower species growing within a 200-meter section of Acacia Crescent, concluding with the identification of his fourteenth and final species: a common daisy growing between the pavement slabs outside number 42. 'Bellis perennis,' Rootstock announced to his wife, who has heard the phrase before. 'That completes the survey. Every species on Acacia Crescent is now formally documented, mapped, and cross-referenced with historical records dating to 1994.' The survey, which Rootstock began shortly after his 35th birthday, comprises 847 pages of field notes, seasonal distribution maps, photographic records, and a section he calls 'the phenological appendix' that tracks the flowering dates of each species across three decades. County botanical recorder Janet Pistil confirmed receipt of the survey. 'It is, without question, the most detailed account of the flora of a single residential street that I have ever received,' she said. 'The data on dandelion microhabitat preferences alone runs to sixty pages. It is both impressive and, in a way I find difficult to articulate, slightly too much.' Rootstock has already begun planning his next project: a comprehensive lichen survey of his garden wall, which he estimates will take approximately fifteen years. 'The wall has been there since 1952,' he said. 'It's not going anywhere. Neither am I.' His wife, Patricia, confirmed that she has 'made her peace with it' and asked only that the new survey not require the dining room table, which was occupied by pressed dandelion specimens for most of 2007.