Tag Archives: wildflowers

wildflowers continue!

I’ve missed a few days of posting photos because I’m in the process of putting together a second edition of my flora guide and I’ve been out almost every day hiking and photographing leaving little time for anything else. BUT, as you probably know, the flowers won’t last forever so I gotta get ’em while I can!

Yesterday I spent half the day with friends and representatives of the Maricopa Audubon Society and the Central Arizona Butterfly Association. It was a scouting trip for a possible bird and or butterfly walk next Spring. The area is in the North East part of the McDowell Sonoran Preserve and is one of the most beautiful trails in the Preserve. Because this area is at a higher elevation, there were still plenty of Wildflowers. To give you an idea of how much there is to see…..the trail is just 9/10ths of a mile each way but we spent 4 hours exploring! All in all, it was a very successful morning and I’m betting they will add this trail to their schedule next year.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPFJ89Vkukk

spectabilis!

We didn’t find any Mariposa Lilies up in the North Access of the Preserve yesterday (still too early) but two other sightings more than made up for it! It was extremely windy thus very difficult to photograph but I wanted to share some photos this morning.

The first was Penstemon pseudospectabilis, aka Desert Beardtongue. I knew they were up in the North part of the Preserve but they’ve been eluding me.

Desert Beardtongue
desert beardtongue
(note the cup-like leaves with toothy edges)

There were only a few of the Penstemon but quite a few of the second sighting which was Delphinium scaposum. It’s known as Mountain Larkspur and described as being a deep purple so I’m curious about the pink ones right beside them. Last year I saw pale blue ones too. An anomaly maybe?

Mountain Larkspur (too windy to get a close-up)
mountain larkspur

Update: Thanks to Steve Jones for a response that the Larkspur are all indeed “scaposum”. To quote Steve: “it’s a little Mendelian genetics at work”. Click here to see what that’s all about!

what’s blooming in the north preserve

Almost nine miles (8.64) of hiking in the North Preserve yesterday revealed wildflowers galore! The same but more of what I posted on March 6th and March 7th along with new sightings. There were some nice large areas of Poppies and Lupine on the Tom’s Thumb trail but we got there before they opened. They were scarce in the Rock Knob area but I definitely see evidence of plants so it may the last area to pop out.

Photographers FYI: Most Preserve flowers are VERY small so take a macro lens.

Click on Image for Slideshow of almost everything I saw yesterday:
bee and lupine

Tech stuff: Canon 7D with Canon 100 Macro, ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/1500 sec