DESERTS ARE AWAKENING SWEETLY NOW
When deserts awaken in the springtime, their flowers open with a special sweetness. It’s not that life is more precious here, but it is harder -- the labor of surviving is heavier. The fight for water and food is more fierce. The sun, winds, and cold are punishing.
Desert blossoms have to be strong enough to exist and beautiful enough to attract butterflies, bees, and birds who will spread their pollen.
Life punches through the desert floor, explodes out of thorny cacti, and pops out of heavily budded spikes.
The harshest, driest, thorniest, most extreme deserts of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, California, New Mexico, and Texas, soften and surrender in springtime. Annual and perennial wildflowers start their parade as early as January, marching swiftly, from lower to higher elevations, embellishing them with color and scent along the way.
Degrees of rain, wind, and temperature all set the tempo -- determining when the plants wake up from winter dormancy, when they bud, bloom, and go to seed. The wetter with winter, the more flowers emerge.
Sonoran Desert sands are more flowery than most in the spring. Right now, it is rolling out a yellow carpet of wild poppies. Blue palo verde trees turn pale gold to echo. Orange globe mallow and purple lupine sway in the breeze.
Staghorn, buckhorn and pencil cholla cacti are among the first to break out. Native Americans harvest cholla buds, roast them and begin to eat fresh food again after a winter of bare subsistence. They taste like broccoli and asparagus. And like them, they are rich in calcium.
Hummingbirds flit among red-orange spidery ocotillo blossoms. Prickly pear cacti fatten their fruits. Sunflowers shoot up to kiss their mother. Ironwood trees push out lavender blooms every other year.
Death Valley awakens -- filling up with vibrant, colorful life.
Gold, purple, pink or white wildflowers blanket the hard-baked ground as it collects new heat from newly angled rays. They live only long enough for a brief breath -- living through their entire seed to blossom to seed life cycle in the short time between the monsoon rains and the achingly dry heat.
Spring busts out first at the lower elevations, where it’s warmer, starting in mid-February, and carries on to mid-April. Wildflowers: Desert Gold (Geraea canescens), Notch-leaf Phacelia (Phacelia crenulata), Caltha-leaf Phacelia (Phacelia calthifolia), Golden Evening Primrose (Camissonia brevipes), Gravel Ghost (Atrichoseris platyphylla), Bigelow Monkeyflower (Mimulus bigelovii), Desert Five-spot (Eremalche rotundifolia).
When that’s done, the higher slopes, valleys and canyons take their turn, with Desert Dandelion (Malacothrix glabrata), Brittlebush (Encelia farinosa), Princesplume (Stanleya pinnata), Desert Paintbrush (Castilleja chromosa), Fremont Phacelia (Phacelia fremontii), Mojave Aster (Xyloriza tortifolia), Bigelow's Coreopsis (Coreopsis bigelovii), Indigo Bush (Psorothamnus arborescens), Desert Globemallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua).
Finally the mountain slopes surrender their toughness to desert Mariposa (Calochortus kennedyi), Purple Sage (Salvia dorrii), Rose Sage (Salvia pachyphylla), Panamint Penstemon (Penstemon floridus austinii), Magnificent Lupine (Lupinus magnificus), Inyo Lupine (Lupinus excubitus).
You can find out what is blooming right now, or any time, by checking with the DesertUSA wildflower hotline. Also check out its weekly reports.
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IMAGE CREDITS:
- Photo: by Rennett Stowe. Mojave Desert Landscape.
- Photo: by Randy Robertson. Cactus Bloom, San Marino California.
- Photo: by Joshua Brauer. Death Valley Bloom.
- Photo: by Bill Gracey. Cactus Blooms, Anza Borrego Desert State Park, California.
- Photo: by Anthony Greco. Death Valley.
- Photo: by Jo Castillo. Cholla Cactus Bloom, New Mexico.
- Photo: Courtesy of Eastern Tennessee Wild Flowers. Fouquieria splendens.
- Photo: by Robert McNicholas. Death Valley Bloom.
- Photo: by Tim. Wildflower Bloom, Arches National Park, Utah.
- Photo: by Curtis Brown. Titus Flora, Death Valley.
- Photo: by M Molvray. Lupinus Excubitus.
- Photo: by Jimmy Thomas. Goblin Valley, Utah.
- Photo: by John Morgan. Cactus Bloom, South Mountain Park, Phoenix, Arizona.
- Photo: by Ken Bosma. Barrel Cactus, Tucson, Arizona
- Photo: by Bill Gracey. Sand Verbena, Borrego Springs, California.
