Michael Park, a graduate student of botany, was doing research on a mountain near San Francisco last year when he stumbled across the unexpected: a small pink flower that scientists had thought was extinct.

Park had found the ‘Mount Diablo buckwheat,’ Eriogonum truncatum, a 30-cm plant that no one had seen since 1936. Scientists had almost given up on the buckwheat, whose tiny blooms resemble gypsophila, or baby’s breath.

A year later, botanists are reproducing the buckwheat in greenhouses, studying the soil and rocks where it was found, forming committees to learn more about it and using the plant to educate the public about the importance of conservation. They’re considering growing a new patch of the buckwheat on the mountain, and monitoring it with 24-hour video surveillance.

The near-demise of any species is significant to the health of the planet, said Tom Daniel, botany curator at the California Academy of Sciences.

“It’s like removing rivets from an airplane,’’ Daniel said. “At some point, you’re not going to be able to fly.’’

Park, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, made his discovery away from trails, at the edge of a dense thicket on Mount Diablo, a 1,173-meter peak east of San Francisco. The plant was already rare when it was last spotted, 69 years earlier, by another Berkeley student.

—Bloomberg