When I think Easter I think of springtime and flowers, even though in most of the places I’ve lived those flowers are still a couple of months away. They’re not this year, though, as I’m in the California desert, chasing the wildflowers. And one of my favorite desert wildflowers is the Ajo Lily, also known as the Desert Lily.
Arroyo del Salado campground
When it comes to lilies, I really lucked out this year. I’ve been spending a lot of time this past month in Anza Borrego State Park, staying in the Arroyo del Salado primitive campground. And Arroyo del Salado has been Desert Lily Central.
A few lilies in one of my campsites in Arroyo del Salado
I thought I’d share a few of those lilies with you, being that it’s Easter and all.
Desert Lilies grow and change, evolving over time.
I think one of the reasons Desert Lilies are a favorite is that each plant is so unique, such an individual. That’s not the case with all wildflowers. Sand Verbena, for instance. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love Sand Verbena, one of the sweetest scented flowers in the desert. But one patch of sand verbena does not look that different from another. Lilies are different.
Sand Verbena flowers are just not as unique as Desert Lilies!
Maybe it’s because desert lilies do not grow as thickly as some other desert wildflowers. Like me, these plants need their space! They’re not “city” flowers, they avoid the crowds. They prefer room to grow and express their individuality.
They’re not antisocial, they just don’t want to be crowded!
Like people, they grow and change over time, as all their blossoms don’t bloom at once. They stretch it out and take their time. It’s fun to watch each individual plant evolve.
Desert Lilies in Arroyo del Salado
The desert lilies aren’t the only wildflowers blooming in Anza Borrego. I’ve been spending my time in Anza Borrego because, during March, more desert wildflowers were blooming there than anywhere else.
Wildflowers on Henderson Canyon Road, Anza Borrego State Park
Within the last few days, though, some of the other wildflower hotspots, like the south end of Joshua Tree National Park, have finally started putting on a show. Chia, Desert Dandelions and Mexican Poppies are filling the fields. Look in the washes for nice displays of Canterbury Bells and Chuparosa. Further north in Wiilson Canyon Wooly Daisies, Tickseed and Bladderpod are lighting up the landscape in gold.
Canterbury Bells in Joshua Tree National Park
I’m looking forward to a very colorful April as I slowly make my way back North, following the flowers. But for right now, spending Easter with the Desert Lilies of Anza Borrego is a perfect place to be!
I usually spend April chasing the bloom, following the wildflowers north as I travel on my way home to Alaska. When John of Journeys With Johnbo proposed Going Back – The Second Time Around as the theme for this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge, I thought I would revisit my usual April travels, canceled this year by Coronavirus. I miss the flowers!
My wildflower journey starts in the California desert. There are three don’t-miss locations, each with its own unique flora, that I revisit every spring if I can.
Yucca Blossoms
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
The first is Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. This is California’s largest state park, and it’s a beauty. Anza-Borrego often has one of the best spring wildflower displays in the country.
The first time I visited Anza-Borrego it was during a rare cold spell in January. I wasn’t even thinking about flowers. Temperatures got into the teens overnight, unheard of in this region. I wasn’t expecting that! Pipes froze. I froze. I went to Agua Caliente Hot Springs to warm up, and my bathing suit froze into a solid block of ice as soon as I took it off.
Fishhook Cactus Flower
For my second time around, I made sure not to go in January! Now I go for the flowers, a little later in the year, anytime between mid-February to mid-April. I often visit twice, or even three times during a wildflower season, so that I can photograph different flowers as the bloom progresses.
The next time I go to Anza Borrego, chasing the bloom, I hope to hike Hellhole Canyon since I’ve never been there. Not only does it have great flowers, it’s a favorite hangout for Desert Bighorn Sheep. The Peninsular Bighorn is the subspecies that lives here. It’s usually found in Baja California, and Anza-Borrego is the only place in the US where you can find this animal.
Joshua Tree
Joshua Tree National Park
Going north, I’ll stop at Joshua Tree National Park. I don’t spend much time in the northern part of the park, with the iconic rocks and namesake Joshua Trees. I spend most of my time near the southern border, because that is where the wildflowers are.
The next time I go to Joshua Tree, I might spend more time up in the rocks. Maybe I’ll even get a campsite there. It looks like an incredible place to explore if I wasn’t quite so fixated on the flowers. I would like to catch a good sunrise, and sunset, from one of those northern campgrounds. I would also like to hike Porcupine Wash and find the petroglyphs I’ve heard are out there somewhere.
Death Valley is colorful!
Death Valley National Park
Then there’s Death Valley. It is a place close to my heart, as I was a ranger there for 8 winters. During some years the wildflowers are sensational, but in other years there is just not enough rain in the driest place in North America for a good spring bloom.
Death Valley is always worth a visit in the springtime, even if there aren’t a lot of flowers. You’ll probably find a few, and you might even find a flower that lives nowhere else in the world! There are literally thousands of untracked, remote, nameless canyons to explore. There are sand dunes and salt flats. And oh, the colors! You don’t need to have a bloom going on to find every color in the rainbow in Death Valley. I look forward to using my new Nikon camera there the next time I visit.
Tidy Tips
Carrizo Plains National Monument
Chasing the bloom, last year I visited Carrizo Plains National Monument for the first time. It won’t be the last. In a good year, Carrizo Plains has THE best wildflower display in the country! I’ve never seen anything like it. It boggles my mind to think that the whole Central Valley looked like this once, in the days before agriculture and oil wells. The flower fields go on forever, mile after mile of solid color. It looks like a monoculture in places, entire hillsides or valleys dyed purple or gold. But when you get out of your car and walk around, the variety is astounding. And the perfume in the air! The delicate scent of the flowers is the best thing about Carrizo Plains in my opinion, pure nirvana.
The next time I visit Carrizo Plains, I would like to visit the area near the campground. I never made it to that part of the Monument because of mechanical issues with my little truck. It was tired of all the dirt road back roads I was taking it on and went on strike! When I got back to pavement and went to the coast to get it fixed, the check engine light magically disappeared!
Purple Mountains’ Majesty
Sometimes I travel up the coast on my way home. There are some flowers, but no big displays, at least not of native flowers. Plenty of beautiful invasives, though!
Sierra Foothills
Usually, I head for the western Sierra foothills. When I get there in the middle of April, it is the peak of the spring bloom. It’s a different ecosystem with different flowers. There are lots of butterflies, too. My favorite bloom, though, is the Redbud tree.
Redbud Blossoms
Wow! I had never seen this tree before my first spring journey to the Sierra foothills. Pink, pink, pink, pink, pink! They’re gorgeous. I’m sorry I’m missing them this year.
Of course, I usually do a drive-thru of Yosemite to check out the waterfalls along the way. I camp for a couple of nights on BLM land along the Merced River. The flowers are great there, it’s close enough to the park for a visit, and it’s not crowded. Maybe the next time I visit the Sierra foothills and Yosemite I’ll actually camp in the park and spend a little more time there. I tend to make my visit short because the park is so loved to death, but if there has been a good snow year and the waterfalls are raging, I can’t resist.
A Yosemite Waterfall
Continuing north through the redwood forest, the flowers grow scarce. Nothing but Redwood Sorrel and Trillium in April there. But the trees make up for any lack of flowers.
Southern Oregon
I’ll continue chasing the bloom into southern Oregon, catching the last spring wildflower season I’ll see on my April journey North. Once again, different ecosystem, different flowers. Lilies abound, with a plethora of different varieties. There are shooting stars, too, one of my favorite flowers.
Fawn Lily and Shooting Stars
The next time I make it to southern Oregon in April, maybe I’ll spend a few more days there. I’m usually running out of time by then, with a deadline imposed by my return to work in Alaska.
I really miss the flowers this year. But maybe when I can travel, I’ll see a host of new varieties since my timing will be different. It’s something to look forward to.
For this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Patti of Pilotfish blog asks us to be a little creative and instead of just shooting what’s right in front of us, use different perspectives to make our photos more interesting.
It’s a good practice, not only in photography, but also in life. When confronted with challenges and unable to solve them, sometimes a change of perspective will help us find solutions or at least a better understanding. When dealing with people that we don’t see eye-to-eye with, looking at issues from their perspective can make it easier to reach a compromise that will work for both parties. It’s a great life skill to develop.
Mendocino County
I’ve only got a few precious days left in Mendocino County, where the landscape leads to many opportunities to use different perspectives. There is a dramatic coastline filled with secluded beaches, steep cliffs, fabulous sea stacks and beautiful arches.
The beaches are decorated with fabulous “sea art”.
Looking down on this arch from the bluff above provides quite a different perspective.
The view from above
Mendo also has some wonderful redwood forests. There are interesting things to find near the forest floor,
Don’t forget to look down, too!
but the trees are so tall you spend a lot of your time looking up.
Navarro Redwoods
Sometimes, if you want to see the very top, you need to lie on your back and shoot straight up!
Montgomery Woods State Park
California Desert
By this time next week, I’ll be in the Mojave, chasing the desert wildflower bloom. That will call for a change of perspective. Although occasionally you may still have to look up for the best photo,
Mescal flowers
more often you’re looking down.
Desert Sand Verbena
For some of the most beautiful desert (and alpine) wildflowers, you have to get right down to the ground and lie on your belly. Because of that, we call these exquisite blooms “belly flowers”.
Lilac Sunbonnets
When photographing flowers, sometimes your best perspective is to come in really close.
Fishhook Cactus
Other times going wide angle, a different perspective, is an interesting way to capture the wide array of colors and shapes, the incredible profusion of blossoms surrounding you.
Joshua Tree National Park
It’s good to walk around a flower to see it from many different perspectives, but please be aware of where you are walking when doing so. Don’t crush a dozen other flowers trying to get that perfect shot of just one! That said, Happy flower hunting!
For this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Ann-Christine asks us to envision the future. It could be near future or far, personal future or universal.
“The future’s uncertain, but the end is always near. ” Jim Morrison
I read Tina’s post, with its warnings about the consequences of climate change. Climate change was already on my mind. I had just spent the morning at an open house held by the Navarro-By-The-Sea Center. They are trying to save the remaining historical buildings still standing at the site of the former town of Navarro-By-The-Sea, but the open house was held more to bring awareness of king tides and the rise of sea level due to climate change.
A king tide was in progress, so to get to the Center those of us without 4-wheel drive had to take a shuttle with high enough clearance to ford the water. The beach parking lot was completely underwater. Sea level is 6 inches higher than it was in 1950. This may not seem like much, but the rate is increasing dramatically, over 66% in the last 5 years. Now it’s rising at the rate of an inch every 5 years, and that rate is still going up. A lot of places are going under, and the king tides are a preview of what will become an everyday occurrence in the near future.
King tides and rising sea level
As I witness ecosystem crashes and see the current administration win one battle after another in its War Against Nature, I despair. When I contemplate the future, I fear we’re already past the tipping point.
I couldn’t go there. I thought of other signs of the consequences of climate change I could write about, but it all made me so sad. I couldn’t write a whole post with no hope, and I was feeling hopeless.
Sea level is rising.
I needed some positivity, so I started playing Michael Franti as I read the post from Soybend, “Someday in the Future”. It was uplifting, positive and poetic, just what I needed. I then learned about new research connecting melting ice in the Arctic to the increasing prevalence of El Nino cycles.
I saw a teeny, tiny silver lining to the dark storm clouds of the future. More El Ninos = more desert wildflowers. Ironic that as so many other places dry up and desiccate, the California desert will get wetter.
More desert wildflowers?
I started thinking about desert wildflowers, and that led me to my personal near future, which is actually pretty exciting.
“The future’s so bright, I’ve gotta wear shades.”
Patrick Lee Mac Donald
I’m currently housesitting on the beautiful Mendocino Coast in northern California. Think redwoods and wild, secluded beaches with an abundance of arches and sea stacks.
Love those Redwoods!
I’ll leave here in early March and go down to see the desert flowers. I’ll head east and travel through the Sierra foothills so I can avoid the urban insanity of San Francisco traffic. Along the way, maybe I’ll stop at Yosemite.
Yosemite Falls
I have four flower destinations in mind. Death Valley received nearly an inch of rain over the winter, which is a decent amount for that place. When I passed through in mid-January, there were a lot of little seedlings coming up. I even saw a Turtleback blooming already. If the winds and heat aren’t too brutal, it might be a nice bloom this year. Since the last 3 years were abysmal there, I’m looking forward to and hoping for a good season this time around.
Notchleaf Phacelia
Joshua Tree has gotten a lot of moisture this winter, both snow and rain. There’s a current winter storm warning there, so the precip is still happening. I think Joshua Tree might be THE place to check out this year, although I doubt if it will be quite as outrageous as it was last spring.
Purple Mat
Anza Borrego has gotten a fair amount of precipitation, too, over an inch in one winter storm. Smaller storms since then have kept the ground moist. Word is flowers are already blooming in Coyote Canyon.
Wild Apricot
Last year I discovered Carrizo Plains. The rough dirt roads are hard on my little truck, but I’ll just have to try to go slow and pray the washboard isn’t TOO bad. I thought it had some of the best wildflowers I’d ever seen, and Carrizo got hit by all the same storms that have inundated Joshua Tree.
Camping at Carrizo Plains
As I head back north to Alaska, those Sierra foothills and southern Oregon should be blooming. I’m not sure if I’ll travel back by the coast or interior yet, but by May I’ll be back home enjoying the incredible view from my front porch.
Superbloom? I don’t think so. There’s a lot of talk about a superbloom in Anza Borrego. I have to admit, some of that hype came from me! The reason for all the talk was the rain, 5 inches since January. A lot of rain, and a heavy rain between October and December, is essential for a big bloom. Anza Borrego got the rain.
Dune Evening Primrose (Oenothera deltoides) and Sand Verbena (Abronia villosa)
But rain is not the only factor that controls just how great a flower season will be. Heat and wind are important, too. There IS such a thing as too much heat too soon, and that is what happened at Anza Borrego. It has been HOT! Temperatures have been in the 90s for most of the last 2 weeks. Flowers bolt, going quickly to seed, if the temperatures are high, instead of sticking around for a long, leisurely flower season.
Desert Chicory (Rafinesquia neomexicana) and Blue-eyed Scorpion Weed (Phacelia distans)
Another way emerging flowers adapt to the heat is dwarfism. Teeny tiny versions of the flower will appear. Instead of wasting time growing into a big plant with full size blooms, the flower forms a miniature version in an attempt to get viable seeds produced before the heat kills the plant. The few Desert Five-Spots I saw in Anza Borrego were following this strategy.
Mike Ellis, This bug’s for you!
Although not a superbloom, it is still a lovely flower season. Near Borrego Springs, the roadsides are filled with Dune Evening Primrose, Sand Verbena, Brown-Eyed Evening Primrose, Desert Chicory, Desert Gold Poppies and Ajo Lilies. There were even some Beavertail Cactus blooming along Coyote Canyon Road!
Ajo Lily (Hesperocallis undulata)
As you climb out of the lowest parts of the valley, look for Desert Dandelion and patches of Phacelia. I saw four different kinds of phacelia in the park, and there are probably more.
Blue Eyed Scorpion Weed (Phacelia distans)
In slightly higher elevations, such as Butte Pass Road, look for fields and fields of cryptantha and brown-eyed primroses. This area is littered with lilies, too, but sometimes they are hard to spot. Try morning light to see the lilies at their best.
Chuparosa, aka Hummingbird Bush (Justicia californica)
Another great thing about these mid to higher elevations are the bushes. Ocotillo is blooming, the red tips of their branches like tongues of flame licking at the blue sky.
Ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens)
One canyon in particular, Plum Canyon, seemed to be Flowering Bush Canyon Central. Ocotillo, chuparosa, desert lavendar, wild apricot, and others I couldn’t even name crowded the canyon.
Desert Lavendar (Hyptis emoryi)
Anza Borrego is looking great right now. Don’t wait TOO long, see these flowers before the heat causes them all to bolt. If you can’t make it right away, though, I’ll bet cactus flower season here will be spectacular, too.
Hawk Canyon
Wonder what’s happening in Death Valley? Stay tuned to this blog for an update on Death Valley’s flower situation, coming real soon!
I’ve got a wildflower update for you. I just spent the weekend in Anza Borrego, and it’s all about lilies!
Desert Lily (Hesperocallis undulata)
Desert Lilies are blooming all over the northern two-thirds of the park. They’re not the only flower blooming, but they are certainly the most dramatic.I am especially excited because I have wanted to see Desert Lilies for YEARS, but have never been in the right place at the right time before.
The pollinators are happy to see the lilies, too.
Lilies aren’t the only flowers blooming. There are those frequent first bloomers, the brown-eyed evening primrose.
Desert Lily (Hesperocallis undulata) and Brown-eyed Evening Primrose (Camissonia claviformis) – Check out all the lupine plants beginning to come up, too!
Other early bloomers include Desert Sand Verbena. Cryptantha, and California Spectacle Pod.
Desert Sand Verbena (Abronia villosa)
There are even a few Dune Evening Primrose.
Dune Evening Primrose (Oenothera deltaoides)
Seeing these lovely flowers is pretty special, but even better is the fragrance. OH-MY-GOD!! Walking through the field late Saturday afternoon just before sunset, I breathed in great drafts of what was possibly the most exquisite scent I’ve ever smelled. Think about it – lilies, of course, sand verbena, that I USED to think was the sweetest smelling flower in the desert, two different evening primroses, and scented cryptantha. I wish I could bottle it up and sniff it forever.
What is really exciting is that wildflower season is just getting started here. There’s not a lot of variety yet, but by mid-March, things should be REALLY cranking!
Check out all the buds yet to bloom on this flower! It’s just getting started!
It’s raining in the desert, yet again. It poured yesterday, flash flooding in many areas. This rain, followed by a warming spell predicted for the rest of the week, should really get the blooms popping.
Desert Chicory (Rafinesquia neomexicana)
A few species of phacelia are starting to bloom. I saw lots of lupine plants in the meadows at the beginning of the Coyote Canyon Road, and desert five spot seedlings on Buttes Pass Road.
Ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens)
Perennials are starting to show their colors, too. A few ocotillo have started to flower. The Wild Apricot are blossoming in Plum Canyon. Chuparosa is blooming in the mid-elevations.
Chuparosa (Justicia californica)
Not much is happening in the south part of the park yet. There are some cryptantha and brown-eyed evening primrose, but that is about all. But wherever you go, things are really, really green. The middle of March will be absolutely AMAZING!
Brown-eyed Evening Primrose (Camissonia claviformis) and Cryptantha (Cryptantha sp.)
If you do come out to see the flowers, please, please, PLEASE be mindful of where your feet are. If you step backwards to get the awesome shot, look where you are going so you don’t kill another perfect flower. I found three trampled lily plants in one field, and the season has just begun. Happy flower hunting, but do be careful out there!
