The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring

I've told you before about the Anza-Borrego Desert. It's a place BP and I love (we spent part of our honeymoon there), treasuring its beauty and the myriad forms of life that figure out how to survive there.

Generally, California is only green for the month of March. Somehow, the green color softens the hills. This has been a wet winter for Southern California (San Diego is lucky to see 5 inches of rain a year). And, the storms have been spread out, meaning the rain that made it out to the desert did not fall all at once, but more dispersed. This has made it an excellent year for wildflowers, and I'm sure the calls to the Anza Borrego Wildflower Hotline have been legion. (This is the Southern Californian equivalent to New England Leaf-Peepers.)

So, along with everyone else in San Diego, we headed to Borrego this weekend, taking our trusty Honda along rough dirt roads and fishtailing through sandy washes. We were certainly rewarded, with veritable carpets of flowers, scumbled as if by a painter's hand in patches on the desert floor. Even in the stark badlands, a few brave blooms could be found.

There were Arizona lupine, and sand verbena; brown-throated primrose, and desert dandelions. There were odd lilies and tiny magenta flowers wedged into the cracks of rocks. Even the tar-smelling creosote boasted small yellow flowers. And the great spindle ocotillo with red flowers at the tips of their branches, like candles. Insects and birds are busy, and we saw an enormous (ca. 4") caterpillar urgently eating its way through one bush.

Many flowers are still to come including indigo bush, desert lavendar, and cacti like the various cholla. It's early yet and with the passing weeks the bloom will move up the mountain, until the hills have a final surge of color, then return to their drab golden brown for the next 10 months.


Update: This is for Margaret. This caterpillar is about 4.5" long--you could hear him chomping. His tail has spikes. I bet he makes a fearsome moth. Click on this (or any pictures) for a bigger view.

Desert blooms

The deserts of California may look bleak and dead to the casual visitor. But to afficionados, the subtlety of color and texture and aroma hint at the life under the khaki.

Depending on how wet the year has been (and it generally isn't very), there is a brief spring bloom of wild flowers in the desert. First, tiny ground-hugging flowers carpet the desert floor, in succession of white and pink and yellow. A little later, the brilliant cactus flowers appear, like garish neon lights from all-night diners, luring in traveling birds and insects for a meal. None of it lasts very long, so the desert parks have "wildflower hotlines" not unlike the leaf-peepers of a New England Autumn. This picture from 2008 shows the long, spindly ocotillo, the fuzzy looking cholla, and the beavertail cactus with its vivid pink flowers. That silvery branch in the front right looks like a piece of smoke tree.

Usually BP and I try to get out to the desert during wildflower season, to admire how the brief period of color illuminates the normally stark landscape. But this has been a brutally busy year for us and we have had no chance to get away. Now, the season is over, and we missed it, and are worn out to boot. Oh well. Maybe next year.