Bloomin' Arizona!

Spring is one of my favorite times in Arizona. Winter has left us (sort of) and the daytime temperatures are between 65 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit. I know other places around the world get to look forward to daffodils and tulips blooming but we get to look forward to wildflower season. Our deserts are quite beautiful (especially this time of year) and are the most biologically diverse deserts in the world.

Depending upon a great many things, such as how much and when the rain falls, sunlight, frost conditions and quite a few other things that we are not even sure about, the wildflowers will bloom. Some years the desert is empty with only a few blooms here and there. Other years there are spots where the ground is carpeted with orange, purple and pink. You can often find wildflowers near Saguaro National Park east or west of Tucson, near Picacho Peak north of Tucson, sometimes around the Superstition Mountains east of Mesa, or just sometimes along the road like Silverbell Rd. in Tucson.

I am going to show some wildflowers that were blooming right outside our house last week.

 

Here is my daughter taking pictures of flowers as well.

First is the most famous of our wildflowers, although it has a neighbors name cause it blooms there too. The California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica ssp. mexicana) is a beautiful delicate orange flower.

Next is the Desert Marigold (Baileya multiradiata):

Penstemon parryi – Parry's Beardtongue

Fiveneedle Pricklyleaf (Thymophylla pentachaeta)

And lastly, Phacelia crenulata – Cleftleaf Wildheliotrope – It's so darn cute!

I should say that I got all of my wildflower information from fireflyforest.net, a really nice website for Plants and Wildlife of Arizona, Hawaii, and Costa Rica. Also, if you haven't guessed, I am not a professional photographer and those flowers are not at their bloomiest. But, that means what you see will look more like this than what the perfect flower on the perfect day with the perfect light looks like.

All these blooms also mean its allergy season, which is not fun. When the citrus or the Palo Verde trees start to bloom, I start to sneeze. I am glad in a way that I am sneezing from our lemon tree. Last year we had such a bad frost that the lemon tree did not produce any lemons for this year. We actually had to buy lemons! I then juiced them and froze the juice cubes so we can use the lemon juice all year round.

If you do not make it to see the wildflowers this year, in May and June you can see our Saguaro's bloom a beautiful white flower that attracts bats at night.

I know this is a different blog for me but I really wanted to share the beauty of the Arizona desert!