flowers!
Good morning!
(from last night)
The two chihuahua’s I live with are named Isabel and Pinto. They’re zooming around the yard (Pinto in particular) as the cat watches lazily from the fence. I’m sitting here in the lavender sunset, watching them, surrounded by the sound of so many birds and a gentle breeze. The temperature seems to be steadily increasing by the day, and this weekend I have become particularly grateful for the few hours in the morning and evening where it is just perfect to be outside. Planning my days around these chunks of time seems like the thing to do.
As I meet more people here, I am continually impressed and moved by how friendly everyone is. I guess in smaller places people do tend to acknowledge one another more, but it feels kind of extreme here! I continue to be taken aback by it. I have a random collection of plants by my window and outside in crates and pots and boxes that is growing so fast I can barely keep up because people keep offering cuttings, baby succulents, whatever they’ve got! Hoping that I can return the favor as the plants I am caring for continue to grow.
I’ve had multiple all-spanish interactions while checking out at the grocery store and picking out avocados. So… those aren’t really conversations but we’re calling it progress ;)
And I have suddenly gotten SO into roller skating (thanks to Nicole for randomly giving me baby blue skates!! I’m hooked). Met some really fun and skilled female skaters at the skate park (very inspiring!) and I’m just having so much fun learning new things and falling. Still in that stage where everything I learn feels fast, so new and exciting, but this also seems like something where there is truly infinite room for improvement (what could be better!).
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I want to share some pictures of flowers from the past few weeks. So SO many beauties in bloom. Just little jewels waiting out in the desert. My head is spinning looking back at these.
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Funastrum cynanchoides (Climbing milkweed. I’m pretty sure…anyone have a clue?)
We found this milkweed twined around small trees and bushes - a little surprise. The stems wind tightly around each other, making it look like the flowers come off of a twisted green rope. At one point, I came across 5 long stems reaching in different directions across the open sand, presumably searching for something else to climb.
Ambrosia Salsola (cheesebush)
The sunlight on these flowers makes them sparkle (this is what I was talking about in my last email!!). Morning really is the best time, it shows in the pictures.
Psorothamnus emoryi (white dalea, Emory’s indigo bush, dyebush)
You can see the tiny pea flowers peeking out at the bottom of this fuzzy inflorescence! White dalea is a bush made of very thin, branching stems, which makes them look sort of silly and disorganized, enthusiastically flopping everywhere. They’re peas, and like many of the peas we’ve been looking at, have bright glands on the leaves and on the flowers. And this was a good find by Beatrice - not on our list of creatures to find for but the population was looking great so we may try to collect some seeds from it!
Psorothamnus spinosus (smoketree)
Another pea. Here you can see the bright orange glands! We’ve been seeing quite a lot of these spiky little trees, most without leaves or flowers. This tree has been one of the few we’ve seen flowering. I love how the trees around here (this one and the palo verde, in particular), just decide to have green stems for all their photosynthesizing needs and don’t even bother with leaves (at least this time of year?).
Eriogonum inflatum (desert trumpet)
I’ve included an Eriogonum flower before but I have more to say and they’re so cute and in this one you can see the fuzzy little bud….or fruit… it’s up in the air. Eriogonum is part of the Polygonaceae - Buckwheat! - family. These little flowers are so darn tiny! And we are struggling with actually identifying what is the bud and what is the developing fruit, which we kind of need to know in order to collect their seeds. Lots to learn!
This (stunning) creature is some kind of yucca, I believe Hesperoyucca whiplei (our Lord’s candle/Quixote yucca).
Yuccas are in the Asparagus (Asparagaceae) family, and it’s so obvious in this stem! I love driving by these and the huge agaves that truly look like Dr. Seuss Asparagus - way taller than me. And their stems are so darn hefty, this one as big around as my calf. Just thinking about how much goes into making that blows my mind.
Parkinsonia florida (ah! Sweet blue palo verde). I love it I love it I love it!
Tiquilia palmeri (palmer’s crinklemat)
I love these little leaves! So much! These aptly named folks live in bushy little clumps along the ground with tens of these little purple flowers dotting each plant. They’re all flowering right now and it’s so pretty. This population is actually one of the first we have taken an herbarium specimen of (we get to press the plants - for this one root and all - and send them off at the end of the season!!). They were located in a beautiful little wash in the middle of an expanse of the wildest rocks I have ever seen. Perfectly smoothed rocks of all different colors and patterns. It was wild! I have so many questions!
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Some fun, plant related resources I’ve been basking in, in case anyone’s interested!
The landscape (and plants) in this particular episode is pretty similar to the areas where Beatrice and I spend a lot of our days.
http://floradebajacalifornia.blogspot.com/p/ephedra-californica.html
Botany blog in Spanish! This is really fun to look at, and it seems that a lot of the plants we are looking at extend south (the Sonoran desert is huge!). This particular post is on Ephedra - we’ve seen a lot of it, it’s a little bush that is actually a conifer (!) so has tiny little cones. Here’s some cones that we came across the other day.
https://www.cch2.org/portal/taxa/index.php?taxon=Yucca+schidigera&formsubmit=Search+Terms
I’ve been blown away by how much information is available on sites like this that contain herbarium information. Digital collections of so many plants, when they were collected, where, and pictures. There’s so much information out there :)
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Ok, that’s all for now. Cheers!
<3, maya