I stopped and took a photo of this pretty desert marigold on our way to visit Mom today. It was growing on the side of the road about a quarter mile from here.
The Sonoran Desert Museum has this factoid about these wildflowers:
The desert marigold (Baileya multiradiata) is a member of the Asteraceae family. The members of this family are characterized by individual florets arranged in dense heads making the floret group look like one single flower. On the marigold the clusters form a head 2 inches in diameter and are bright yellow in color. The leaves are green with silver-white hairs, lobed, and grow very low on the thick stems.
These plants can be found growing on sandy or gravelly soils of roadsides, plains, washes, mesas, and pinyon-juniper communities.