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!
How do warm colors make you feel? For me, they bring a smile to my face, excitement and happiness. I often use a warming filter on my camera because I like my colors a little warmer in most instances. This may come as no surprise to you, as I scurry south every winter to get more of the warmth! My favorite time to do photography is the late afternoon and early evening. It’s not only that I’m too lazy to get up early, I prefer the warm light!
Bladderpod in Joshua Tree National Park
The desert is full of warm colors. Even in the wintertime, you can find warm colors in the sunsets, the red rock, even the birds. I’ve been seeing a lot of those warm colors this past week.
Even the birds have warm colors in the desert.
As for warm wildflower colors, not so much, but there are a few.
Red rock is a warm color you can always find in the desert.
The warmest color in Saguaro National Park’s foliage is the yellow fruits from last year’s barrel cactus bloom.
The warmest color in Saguaro National Park this week
But there is one flower blooming in Saguaro, the delicate pink Fairy Duster.
Fairy Duster
Organ Pipe was greener. It looks to be a good bloom there in a couple of weeks. Right now Ocotillo is what’s blooming.
Ocotillo is blooming in Organ Pipe.
Here’s a closer look at those beautiful warm red flowers.
Ocotillo blooms
There was a carpet of green from the Sonoran into California, giving me high hopes for a good flower season in a couple of weeks. But right now the only thing blooming in that vast expanse was Brittlebush.
Brittlebush has started to bloom throughout the deserts.
I was underwhelmed and a bit disappointed when I got to Joshua Tree National Park. I had expected more.
Bladderpod
Even the Brittlebush was sparse. There were a couple of new flowers blooming, Bladderpod and Chuparosa. These are both perennial bushes, as are Fairy Dusters, Brittlebush and Ocotillo. Annual flowers are practically non-existent still.
Chuparosa
I did find a few Canterbury Bells in Joshua Tree, but that was it. The carpet of green I’d noticed in the Sonoran desert was missing here. By this time of year, there should have been a haze of fuzzy green, the seedlings of the annuals, covering the roadsides. I don’t know if the southern part of Joshua Tree missed the storms, or if it’s been too cold, but don’t expect a big bloom in Joshua Tree this spring. Very little is even sprouting there now.
Perennials like Brittlebush are doing well.
A little bit of good news, though. Reports from Anza Borrego indicate that it should be a good wildflower season there. It’s already starting, especially the Sand Verbena, the sweetest-smelling flower in the desert. I’ve seen fields full of them here in the Palm Springs area, too.
Not really a warm color, but Sand Verbena is what’s blooming!
The latest reports I’ve found from Death Valley are a couple of weeks old, but state that sprouts are coming up, so I’m hopeful. I will be visiting both Anza Borrego and Death Valley next week and will have a better idea then of what this season will be like.
Will the sand dunes be the only warm colors in Death Valley when I get there?
So it looks like the flowers may get going a little late – March will probably be the best month to see the desert bloom this year. Until then, enjoy the warm colors wherever you are, wherever you find them – in the rocks, in the sunset – but keep your eyes open, warm colors in the flowers are coming soon!
Red rocks in Organ Pipe National Park
Thank you, Egidio, for bringing us this week’s Lens-Artists Photography Challenge, Warm Colors.
What does spring mean to me? That’s the question posed by Sofia of Photographias in this week’s Lens-Artists Photography Challenge. For me, spring equals two things: road tripping and wildflowers.
Ajo Lilies in Anza Borrego State Park
This way of celebrating spring started for me when I used to work winters as a ranger in Death Valley National Park. There, I fell in love with the desert spring bloom. You would not think a land that averaged less than 2 inches of rain a year would have many wildflowers. Surprisingly though, in more years than not, it does. Due to the great diversity of landscapes and elevations, even in a dry year you can find some wildflowers somewhere.
Wildflowers in Death Valley’s Saline Valley
It can be one of the most astounding natural events you’ll ever witness in a good year. During a Superbloom, the flowers start in January and just keep coming. Dry, rocky, barren land is suddenly completely carpeted with color. The variety is phenomenal. They are so thick on the ground that you can hardly take a step without crushing a half dozen blooms. Once I saw a real superbloom, I never wanted to miss another.
Superbloom in Joshua Tree
So I started following the bloom. I would spend a lot of time in February and March traveling between my two favorite desert wildflower spots, Death Valley and Anza-Borrego State Park, and spending a few days at Joshua Tree National Park along the way.
The wildflowers should be amazing in Carrizo Plain by mid-April.
Slowly starting my trip back home to Alaska in early April, I would try to visit Carrizo Plain National Monument. In a good year, this is the best place ever to see wildflowers. Despite the hype that is out there, this year is not a superbloom year. For that, you need a good soaker storm in the fall to get the seeds going. California did not receive all that rain until January. Carrizo Plain is starting to get some color but no big displays yet. I think it could be fantastic in a couple more weeks, though, as more and more flowers germinated in January bloom.
Wildflowers could be incredible in the Sierra Nevada foothills, too.
Traveling north, I edge along the western foothills of the Sierra and make a fly-by visit to Yosemite’s waterfalls, another spring phenomenon. I think the Sierra foothills are where the real superbloom will happen this spring.
Redwood Sorrel
I would continue north through the Redwood Sorrel and Trilliums of northern California to my last big spring wildflower extravaganza, in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon. Since there were very few wildflowers blooming further north, I would beeline home from there, going back into winter along the way.
Arrowleaf Balsamroot in the Siskiyou Mountains
This year is a little different. I have spent the entire winter in one spot, northern Washington’s Orcas Island. I’ve kept my carbon footprint low, only using two tanks of gas through the entire winter.
Red Warrior
But that’s about to change. Although there are domestic flowers beginning to bloom here now – crocuses, hellebore, fruit trees – there are no wildflowers. As I said last week, domestic flowers don’t thrill me. I need a wildflower fix before I head back into winter.
Fawn Lily
So starting April 2, I’m road tripping down to the closest place where I can see good wildflowers, the Siskiyous in southern Oregon. I’m in love with the trees of that region also, so I am really looking forward to it. I’ll visit a few friends and a few beaches along the way down, too.
Shooting Stars
When I start heading home from there, I may detour into the southern Cascades for a day or two in search of mossy waterfalls to photograph. It all depends on how far spring has progressed by then.
I’ll be looking for waterfalls, too.
As I move north of the border, it’s time to start looking for spring wildlife instead of spring flowers. If I take the AlCan Highway, I may be rewarded by sightings of Woodland Caribou and the rare Stone Sheep. I will certainly see Wood Bison on that route. If I take the Cassiar, I will probably catch a glimpse of a bear or two.
Stone Sheep
By the time I reach the Yukon, I will have traveled back into winter. Well, it will look a bit like winter anyhow. Actually, it will be that in-between season, known in the Northland as Breakup.
It’s still winter in the Yukon in April.
Breakup is a rough time to try to travel off the paved roads. The snow is soft and soggy and will collapse and suck you in. It’s slick and icy in the morning from all the melted water. Wherever it’s not snowy, it’s muddy. The rivers, no longer frozen, are running full, and full of ice. Springtime in Alaska.
But there are signs of Breakup.
There’s a third thing spring means to me. Home. It won’t be long before I’m home, back in McCarthy, trying to figure out how to negotiate the lake in my ATV trail and the downed trees on my walking path. But that’s another story for another time. Right now it’s spring!
Some of my favorite wildflowers are the belly flowers, blooms so small and low to the ground you need to get down on your belly to really check them out. These treasures grow in two of my favorite habitats, the desert and alpine tundra.
Blackish Oxytrope
I mentioned in my Then and Now post last month that these two habitats, although vastly different, share lots of astonishing similarities. When Anne Sandler of Slow Shutter Speed chose “It’s a Small World” as the theme for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to expound on one of those similarities, belly flowers.
Desert Mohavia
The tundra can be incredibly cold and the desert unbelievably hot, but one challenge common to both is the wind – harsh, desiccating winds that will suck the life out of most plants. Laying low is a good strategy for plants that live in these extreme environments.
Desert Star
Laying low is a great strategy, (and one that I can relate to during this crazy winter!) but it’s not always enough. There are other strategies that many of these plants share, too. For instance, most belly flowers hold onto moisture and prevent harm from damaging UV rays by wearing a sweater. In both the desert and the mountains, many belly flowers have fuzzy leaves or even furry flowers. These hairs not only protect them from too much sun, they also help hold in moisture so it doesn’t evaporate as quickly.
Many belly flowers have fuzzy leaves or furry flowers.
Have you ever crowded together with your friends on a cold, blustery day to stay warm? Some plants grow in cushions or mounds for the same reason. Low, rounded cushions do not leave much surface area exposed to the elements. They retain water, soaking it in instead of letting it all run off. They also catch dust and dirt blowing in the wind and anchor it in place. Since both habitats have thin, poor, rocky soils, capturing and anchoring the minerals and nutrients blowing by is an excellent survival strategy. Moss campion is the best-known alpine cushion flower. My favorite desert cushion is Turtleback.
Turtleback
Turtlebacks were named after their resemblance to a turtle shell, but those convoluted, gray-green leaves also look a lot like a certain important body part. On one of my favorite hikes as a ranger, I was leading a small group up a nameless, nondescript wash in Death Valley. I was walking with an older, slower visitor and let some of the other visitors take the lead. Around a bend in the canyon, I found a little girl and her father crouched down, intently studying something on the ground in front of them. “What did you find?”, I asked. The little girl looked up, face filled with wonder, and said, “We found a brain flower!”
Brain Flower
Survival strategies are good, but worthless if you can’t pass them on to the next generation. Reproduction strategies are important, too. For some belly flowers, it’s a numbers game. If there are lots and lots and lots of flowers, the odds are that some will survive long enough for their seeds to mature. It may be easy to overlook one or two tiny flowers, but if you have thousands upon thousands of them, the blooms will literally carpet hillsides and paint the entire landscape with their pastel colors.
Alpine Azalea carpets acres of tundra
Other flowers are more flamboyant, sure to be noticed by pollinators because of both their size and bright colors. The plant lays low, diminutive and nondescript until it’s showtime. Then it’s hard to believe such a teeny tiny plant could produce such a big, showy flower.
Kittentails are flashy flowers.
Many flowers use yet another reproduction strategy, one that is a great reason to get down on your belly and up close and personal. Attract those pollinators with your irresistible perfume! Rock Jasmine, an alpine flower – well, the name says it all. Desert Sand Verbena is another one. It has the loveliest fragrance of any flower in the desert.
Desert Sand Verbena
I have a little game for you to play. With so many strategies in common, it could be hard to tell a desert belly flower from an alpine one. Check out the following five flowers. Can you tell which ones are desert flowers and which ones grow in the Alaskan tundra? Leave your thoughts in the comments. I’ll put the answers there in a few days, and also let you know in next week’s post.
Is this a desert wildflower?Or a mountain flower?Which one is it?Can you tell?Guess!
By the way, it IS a small world. During these difficult times, it’s good for the soul to practice gratitude and express thanks for the little things in life. It helps make dealing with the big things a little easier. Thanks for reading my posts! Until next time, Happy Trails!
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!
