Near Willow Beach, Arizona, along U.S. 93, the basin and range transforms into a series of rolling hills gently cascading to the Southwest. In mid-March we found ourselves passing these hills, on a trip from Las Vegas to Phoenix, and were blessed to see the beginnings of one of the most amazing payoffs of a rainy season in the desert: yellow wildflowers were popping up all over, giving a rich accent to already green grasses.
It was like a scene from a Dr. Seuss book, a rare sight during these past few years of brutal drought. As the rains have soaked deep, many long-dormant seeds have been revived. The result has been a wildly more colorful desert landscape, with visuals that are exceptionally bold and captivating.
When it comes to finding a scientific explanation for all this, however, the view starts to get a little more subdued, even dusty. As if driven by some unspoken imperative, some have rushed to define it:
“A superbloom is a rare desert botanical phenomenon in California and Arizona in which an unusually high proportion of wildflowers whose seed have lain dormant in desert soil germinate and blossom at roughly the same time. The phenomenon is associated with an unusually wet rainy season.”
These categorizations often seem too obvious and even hopelessly subjective. So much of it depends on where you happen to be and when you happen to be there. And there’s been a fair amount of debate as to whether this wildflower season actually constitutes a “super bloom” at all. To be sure, it can be more “super” in some places than others.
Ultimately, any hard definitions fall short. The simple truth is there’s just a lot of wildflowers out in the desert right now, and every minute spent worrying about what the phenomenon is or isn’t, is a minute lost to see them while they last. And they won’t last forever; that’s not how the desert works.
Thankfully, the act of viewing wildflowers these days requires minimal effort. Under usual conditions, they are subdued, often hidden between larger, less colorful plants. Because of this, they aren’t always readily visible from roadways. But this year, the volume is cranked up so much that it’s possible to get a good view, even while staring lazily out the windows of a car.
To help matters even more, roadsides often provide even more water to the soil because rainwater runs off the edges of the pavement where it soaks into more concentrated areas of disturbed soil. This is why some roads have thicker vegetation (wildflowers included) along pavement edges than might be growing even five or ten feet out into the landscape.
Globemallow, in particular, is making a solid showing along roadsides this year. Of course, it’s equally at home between backcountry boulders, and along footpaths, with its delicate looking pale stems and orange, cup-shaped blossoms that close at night and open toward the rising sun. Globemallow’s height, compared to other flowers, gives it more prominence on the landscape like a highway construction sign.
Along U.S. 191, near Canyonlands National Park, there are currently great fields of globemallow, stretching across the horizon like orange reflections on a sea of green. Try as you might, casual photos won’t do it justice. You can only hope to enjoy the scenery in the moment and maybe, if you’re lucky, capture some of it in memory.
As for the hiking trails, it’s easier to spot shorter specimens like the evening primrose which stands out like a champ–showing white blossoms that look more like they belong in grandma’s garden than on the slopes of any canyon rim or sand dune. The primrose is a dignified, important looking flower that won’t easily be ignored.
Picking a favorite among all these is tough, but there are few wildflowers more admirable to me than the California Blue Bell, Phacelia campanularia. This little annual has rich, brightly colored blue buttons fixed on an attractive array of military green foliage. Like the globemallow, it has rounded petals, but they splay out more than globemallow, giving the blossoms a star-like rather than cup-shaped form. The blue bell is much shorter than globemallow and has a bushier outline, but it can brave some of the toughest soils in either the wilds or the garden.
Near the border of Utah and Arizona, there’s a place operated by the Nature Conservancy called the White Dome Nature Preserve. Here is the home of a special wildflower called the dwarf bear poppy and it’s the only place in the world where it can be found in the wild. The dwarf bear poppy stands out magnificently on the harsh landscape, conjuring up the closest thing to what it might look like if there were flowers on the moon.
I took a short hike through the preserve a few weeks ago. Small patches of poppies could be seen here and there, not in large quantities and spreads, but metered out, with each plant having its own generous amount of personal space. As I walked, the white blossoms and bright green stems seemed to both complement and contradict the surrounding gypsum hills. And the rains had brought blessings here too, with more poppies on display than I had ever seen.
Once again I was grateful for this melding of contrast and consistency so common in nature. It was another landscape paradox, with the poppy as a defining feature–a kind of mascot for what makes wildflower season so special.
The Desert Toad 
🙂 🙂 🙂
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