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Desert Wildflowers in CA

Dear friends,

This is a bit off-subject, but please bear with me.  For those of you
living (or visiting) Southern California, the desert wildflowers are out in
force!  According to the newspapers, it is the best bloom in 10 years . It
is certainly the best bloom I have EVER seen!  Yesterday, my family took a
day trip to Anza Borrego State Park in San Diego County where we live.  The
desert was a wash in color!  Not just the cream/grey/green/brown pallette
that we typically see in the desert, but purples, reds, yellows, pinks....
Here are a few of the highlights:

A typical blooming community included the bright red flowers and velvety
stemmed shrubs known as chuparosa.  I saw some that were five feet tall and
as wide.  In most places, they seemed to be intertwined with bright-yellow
flowered Encilia farinosa, and/or some kind of blue/purple flowered
phacelias.  Chia plants and another salvias that I have yet to identify
were blooming along with the ever-present "teddy bear" or "jumping"
chollas.

In another area, we saw blankets of the purple flower clusters that typify
sand verbena. Among the verbena we saw desert dandylion (I don't know the
bot. name, but they are a composite), popcorn flower (Cryptantha of some
sort), white tackstem (Calycoseris), purple lupins, and some kind of
California poppy with tiny yellow flowers in stead of large orange ones,
and lots of a white oenothera of some sort.  The ocotillo were just
starting their magnificent bloom, another week or two will be a real show!

Perhaps the oddest thing we saw was broomrape.  In the distance, I noticed
what looked a bit like a single,upright pinecone.  As I got closer, it
appeared to be a four inch tall cluster of flowers jutting out of the
ground with no leaves in sight!  At first, it looked brown, but as I got
closer, I could see that the tiny flowers were shaped something like tiny
snapdragons, with deep burgundy lips, white throats adn tiny yellow specks
in the very base of the throat.  It seems that these are parasites, with no
true roots, but rather very far-reaching haustoria that "suck"
photosynthate and water from surrounding plants.  Very strange!

And finally, we laughed at the caterpillars that literally ran across the
road!  Nearly every single milkweed (maybe the leafless milkweed, Asclepias
subulata?) was host to one or more huge caterpillars.  They were
orange/green/yello/black, each with its distinctive pattern of stripes,
dashes and spots.  My husband picked one up and it "slimed" him with thick
green goo.  We saw hundreds of them on plants, and as we drove down one of
the roads, there were more of them, "trucking" across the road as if they
had someplace to go!!!!

So if you have an opportunity, get out there and see the bloom!!!

Nan

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Nan Sterman, Master Composter in Residency
Olivenhain, California
Sunset Zone 24, USDA Zone 10b or 11
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So goes an old chinese proverb:
         If you want to be happy for a few hours, get drunk;
         If you want to be happy for a week-end get married;
         If you want to be happy for a week, barbeque a pig;
         If you want to be happy all your life long become a gardener
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