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Endless blue skies and stretches of open freeway, the edges smudged with orange poppies and wild buckwheat and tumbles of pink and purple bougainvillea.

“Here, I have everything. In the yard around the cabin there are dewberries and wild buckwheat.”

California has many kinds of wild buckwheat, but the blue's life cycle relies exclusively on one species, known as coast buckwheat or seacliff buckwheat. 

Within a few feet, he stops and hunches over a weedy patch at the edge of the asphalt, where he identifies wild buckwheat, wood sorrel and chickweed.

The wild buckwheat is a characteristic feature of the southern landscape.