The Huachuca water umbel is a plant that looks like grass, but isn’t grass. It’s a water plant that needs flooding to propagate and survive. It’s an Arizona native … where flooding is pretty rare now that humans consume the water as fast as they can get it.

Of particular interest is the approximately seven meter run that you see here. This is the largest habitat for this plant in the world.

That’s right, the largest, healthiest stretch of this plant is at the Phoenix Zoo, in a non-public area.

Zoos don’t save only the animal species.