Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
General Subjects => Travel / Places to Visit => Topic started by: Kristl Walek on February 16, 2011, 02:12:55 PM
-
There is a seasonal phenomenon in the southwestern USA that some international plant people may not be aware of--the late winter human migration to the American deserts to see the spring wildflower bloom.
Folks keep their timetables flexible from late January-April and when the time is right (rain being the determining factor), they are off to the deserts of Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Utah.
The desert-bloom web sites issue their email reports on a daily basis, while one is on "standby" deciding where is best to go this year.
http://www.desertusa.com/wildflo/wildupdates.html
For someone with my freedom-loving personality, the spontaneity of that yearly migration pushes all the right buttons.
However, coming from the far north, with a busy seed business to run during the very time I needed to be ready to jump on a plane once it started raining in the desert, required more stealth and scheduling.
So, my last trip there in 2006 had to be thoroughly planned in advance. Here is a report of that sojourn, in case it might inspire someone else to undertake this soul-altering experience.
edit by maggi: remember, by clicking on the thumbnail pictures, they will enlarge 8)
-
I decided on California because of personal and practical considerations. My closest friend, who I had not seen in 30 years, lives in northern California and was keen to do the trip with me. I also liked the fact that the eco-systems in that state varied dramatically from lush mountains to desert, ocean to rich vineyard country. The trip was for a too-short two weeks. I flew into San Francisco and Kathleen and I made the short trip north to her home in Sebastopol (80 km from the airport).
This is vineyard country---and for the first week, we spent time exploring the area, doing wine tasting and indulging in many culinary delights. It was warm enough to eat outdoors in the many restaurants we sampled.
While most vineyards were simple and charming---some had a rather (ridiculous) opulent public style.
-
and because this before the time I lived near the ocean myself here in Nova Scotia, I spent many hours walking the beaches near Sebastopol and looking at the (few) plants in bloom along the shore.
-
I was really itching to hit the highway and get into the wild after a week in civilization---so off we headed early one morning--with Lake Tahoe being our first nights' destination.
To get there involved a wonderful drive through the Sierra Nevada. En route we made a stop at the famous Mono Lake (a desert lake with no outlet to the ocean, dissolved salts therefore making the lake very alkaline and salty). The lake is fascinating for all sorts of other reasons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_Lake
but I wanted to see the famous tufa towers that rise out of it.
-
Lake Tahoe is, of course a major tourist attraction and the largest alpine lake in North America and at 500m deep, the second deepest lake in the USA.
We spent our first night here, in a surprisingly luxurious Best Western tucked into large conifers, right on the lake, at ridicuously affordable rates (I recall it being under $50.00/night) --- and checking now it is not much more expensive, all these years later.
A general comment on hotels: if you are visiting Death Valley National Park---where we were heading next (which lies predominantly in California but right on the Nevada border), it is a short drive into Nevada after a day exploring the desert, and accomodation prices in Beatty (a few minutes right across the border) are rock bottom.
At the local casino in Beatty (and what isn't in this part of the world---even gas stations have slot machines), room rates are often $29.00/night (incentive for gamblers, not for en-route nature fiends, but I didn't argue).
-
From Tahoe we headed south the next morning to Death Valley National Park, which I had never seen before.
Summer temperatures here can run above 120F, but it was perfect at this time of the year. In fact: the USA's highest temperature ever recorded was 134° farenheit on July 10, 1913 and this was in Death Valley. It is also the official highest temperature in the Western Hemisphere.
Large areas of the park are salt flats (sodium chloride--table salt), where of course nothing grows.
And the remainder of the valley floor and lower slopes had sparse vegetative cover.
In fact, I would say that Death Valley was more of geological than botanic interest.
-
Most of the plants I saw while we explored this area over a 2 day period were mostly not within the park proper, but in the adjacent areas.
Artemesia sp.
Castilleja angustifolia
Abronia villosa
Monoptilon bellioides (?) with Astragalus (?)
Sphaeralcea ambigua
Prosopsis glandulosa
-
On day 3 we headed to the nearby Mojave National Preserve, which was significantly more interesting botanically. Three of the four major North American deserts are, in fact found within the Preserve: the Mojave, Great Basin and Sonoran.
The park is huge (1.6 million acres).
Although we were told at the visitors station that little to no rain had fallen here in the past few years--the area had much more obvious plant life that what we had experienced at Death Valley.
It is of course known for Yucca brevifolia (Joshua Tree); a fantastic plant, which was everywhere. We had hoped to venture far enough into the park to see some of the Joshua Tree Forests, but unfortunately we ended up having a problem with the car---and the wait in the desert for 4 hours for a tow truck to arrive from Reno, Nevada forced us to change plans slightly.
-
While waiting to be rescued (I must admit I was happy that one of us had a cell phone---and it wasn't me), we wandered around looking at plants. In that entire full day, we never saw another soul in the park.
Kathleen is standing among clumps of Abronia villosa, which we had seen earlier. Yucca baccata was common, as was Y. schidigera, which I neglected to photograph. We also saw all the Opuntia species we had seen earlier, but here there were many more. I had last seen Oenothera caespitosa in Alberta, although this is apparently var. marginata. Juniperus osteosperma (Utah Juniper) was also frequently seen, with tons of ripe fruits bringing colour to the landscape.
But the highlight of our wandering was running into large clumps of Echinocereus triglochidiatus in bloom. Kathleen posed with one clump to give a perspective of size.
-
But the highlight of our wandering was running into large clumps of Echinocereus triglochidiatus in bloom. Kathleen posed with one clump to give a perspective of size.
Whoa! I would never have guessed the scale without the assistance of Kathleen.... those are meaty plants.
-
We spent most of the remainder of this day driving back to Reno, squeezed inside the front of the tow truck, finding a garage and arranging to get the vehicle fixed (which took most of the next day as well). We amused ourselves as best we could (unfortunately neither of us had a single gambling bone in our bodies).
Having however lost an entire botanizing day, we had to cut out trip short and head back towards Sebastopol, but decided to make a short stop in Yosemite National Park. Unfortunately the roads leading to some of the high Sierra areas was closed due to snow, so we stayed in the lower areas, which were quite spectacular nevertheless, and a dramatic change from the past few days in the desert.
Some of the south facing mountain slopes were brightly coloured with drifts of California poppies and Lupins flowered along the lower areas. This was my first time seeing both Cercis occidentalis and Arctostaphyllos patula in bloom.
-
We spent the night outside Yosemite with mutual friends and our final day was spent in San Francisco visiting nurseries, indulging in gastronomical delights and a quick jaunt to Berkeley (for a trip down memory lane for me) before we found ourselves back home. 2 days later I was back home in cold, Ontario.
Later that summer I saw a few of the species I had seen on my trip blooming in my garden (Echinocereus trig., Opuntia basilaris).
I do apologize for the quality of the pictures---this was the days of the first generation digital cameras, and I had a low-end model on this trip. But I hope I was able to give you the flavour of a trip I still dream of, and would repeat again, at the drop of a pin.
I still think that the most important life lesson my mother ever taught me was to never let an opportunity pass me by. It is easy to find every excuse in the book as to why we can't do something--rather than do whatever it takes to make the opportunity happen. I think most of my trips to wonderful places have happened because I kept my mother's wisdom close. If not, I would not ever have travelled anywhere.
-
In looking at my post this morning I realized that I forgot an entire section on cacti in Death Valley.
Because I can't insert them in the proper slot, I post them here.
As I have mentioned, Optuntia basilaris was perfectly hardy for me in Ontario (-30 to -40C)
-
Amazing scenery Kristl, the Joshua Tree forest sounds intriguing.
-
Thanks for the report Kristl !! :D
Brought back some great memories... ;)
-
Cracking set of images Kristl I thoroughly enjoyed them. Thanks for posting.
-
Thank you Kristl for a very nice set of postings. Like for Luc, they brought back happy memories of a very enjoyable holiday we spent in southern California in 2005. We did not flee your kind of cold, but a very wet winter, and sunny California did not let us down. As you described in your introduction we had kept an eye to the desert flower forecast, and when it seemed quite certain that it would be a good flower year we booked our holiday. In the Anza Borrego Desert the ground was so covered in flowers many places that it was impossible to walk without stepping on a plant, in flower, that you would treasure in your garden. It was an incredible sight.
I have included a few of pictures from our trip, the first two from Anza Borrego, the last two from the Torry Pines conservation park on the coast just north of San Diego. The first picture shows the desert floor in bloom, the second shows nature's companion planting of chuparosa (Justicia californica, red in front), a barrel (?) cactus in bud (Ferocactus), agave, a brittlebush (Encelia farinosa, yellow), and more. The third picture has a Castilleja and a long dead Torrey pine, and the last an Anna's hummingbird in a Yucca.
Definitely a place I would go back to,
Knud
-
absolutly fantastic pics, i love it, please more...
cheers
chris
-
Knud...wonderful. thank you. more, if you have them....my trip was too late for most of the wildflowers; so it is great to see your pictures.
i think it is also wonderful to have as many portraits of this particular late winter sojourn as possible--so other members contemplating a similar trip might be inspired and get ideas of where to go. My local native plant friend here in Nova Scotia, left yesterday morning for the same (enviable) destination and it was because of that I was inspired to post my memories to begin with.
-
Thank you Kristl and Chris for kind comments, I have passed them on to the second photographer, Barbara. These digital pictures were taken with an automatic camera that we used mainly for landscapes and such. The "plant portraits" were taken with my SLR using slide film, and they have not been digitised yet. Also, I didn't realise that the digital camera had a manual focus button, and many of the close-ups we attempted ended up being poorly focussed. The pictures I posted yesterday, and those I post today have been adjusted using an image processing program. The high resolution of modern digital cameras, even the one I used in 2005 (4 Mpixel), means you can used them like "sketch books" when you are out, cutting the picture to final size on the PC. I minimize processing to adjusting size and exposure, if necessary, and some of these have been sharpened.
The area we visited (the coast just north of San Diego, and the hills and desert east of there) were nice and accessible places to botanise. The mountains north and north-west of the Anza Borrego desert looked very tempting, but we did not go there. We went to the desert during the week, as accommodation was difficult to get during weekends on short notice; but still we met a lot fewer people out than we expected. We went mid-March, and we were lucky to be there for one of the best flowerings for decades. If you go, beware of the cacti, even the small ones have big spines. Some places they literally cover the ground, and you have to look where you step, and if you are busy looking for plants that can be difficult. Once we had to extract a spine from deep in a Vibram sole. Also, we were lucky to be blissfully ignorant of the apparantly particularly venomous rattle snakes there are that corner of the US: it made for a much freer botanising. And then there are the cougars, but at least the are signs about those many places. We didn't see any snakes or cougars, but we did see a cute little bobcat, - and a beep-beep road runner.
Knud
Picture 1: Desert sunflowers (Geraea canescens, yellow) among dune evening primroses (Oenothera deltoides, white) and sand verbena (Abronia villosa, lilac(?))
Picture 2: Several brittlebush (Encelia farinosa, yellow) on hill, with a few Opuntias, probably Teddy Bear Cholla (bigelowii) and Staghorn Cholla (versicolor). White buttons are Fremont Pincushions.
Picture 3: a poor picture of a Chia (Salvia columbariae). We have had this in the garden as an annual.
Picture 4: Fremont Pincushions (Chaenactis fremontii, white) and an Opuntia (?) skeleton. Small purple buttons on ground are probably Chia's.
Picture 5: Whispering Bells (Emmenanthe penduliflora, cream white, on left) and somewhat unfocussed Desert Canterbury Bells (Phacelia campanularia, blue). We have had this phacelia in the garden, a beautiful annual.
Picture 6: Layne Milkvetch (Astragalus layneae), I think.
Picture 7: Ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens, straggly bush in middle), in its garden. I blooms a beautiful red.
Picture 8: Desert agave (Agave deserti) in bud. We picked agave seeds, and now have a couple of potted plants in our window.
Picture 9: Apricot mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua, orange) and one of the photographers, Barbara. We had this in the garden one year.
Picture 10: Desert Agave in bloom, and the other photographer, Knud
-
The last five pictures of last post.
Knud
-
you have just reminded me, Knud how often I heard "you should have been here last year" (1995)...the year you and Barbara went...which, as you say, was one of the best blooming years on record. your intuition about timing served you well.
the following year, was not such a good year, and i knew it in advance. but it did little to detract from the joy of the trip for me.
-
Wonderful pictures and plants!
-
You are right, Kristl, it would take a lot more than absence of peak blooming to detract from the joy and fascination of visiting places like these. I was in San Diego twice with work mid to late 90's, and I visited the Anza Borrego Desert both times. It was in February, before blooming had started proper, and they were below average flowering years, but it was breath-taking. I went to see a desert for the first time, and there were all these plants everywhere, some even blooming, I was really surprised. Not very different from the mountains really, in richness, variety, and intensity, and all in a place one wouldn't perhaps expect it. It still surprises me when I come across a big patch of Dryas Octopetala or Pulsatilla vernalis up in the hills. If you are lucky you get to pick a bouquet or three.
Knud
-
knud....your pulsatilla vases literally melted my heart. how lovely!!!!
not even a hint of spring here yet.
-
No spring to talk of yet here either, -the pulsatillas were from last year. I was not the lucky one, but I got to enjoy them.
Knud
-
Wonderful images! Thanks Kristl and Knud!