I snapped this photo of a beautiful iris flower that I spotted on the way home from a visit with Bob’s Mom today. Bob stopped the truck and I got out to get this picture. There were several other nice iris flowers, but this was the nicest picture of all the pretty iris’. Click on the image to enlarge.
Wildflower season is here in the beautiful Sonoran desert. I love the little flowers that just seem to pop up alongside the roads here in town. Here is a little information about this tiny but beautiful flower from Wikipedia:
Sphaeralcea ambigua, commonly known as Desert Globemallow or Apricot Mallow, is a member of the genus Sphaeralcea in the mallow family (Malvaceae).
It is a perennial shrub native to parts of California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona in the U.S. It grows well in alkaline soil, both sandy or clay, usually in the company of creosote bush scrub and desert chaparral habitats, from 490–8,200 feet in elevation. It is found in the Mojave Desert, Great Basin deserts, and Sonoran Desert ecoregions.
Click on the image to enlarge.
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.
When we went to the post office and the discount department store today, it was a pleasant surprise to see the bright red flowers on a claret cup cactus in the landscaped part of the shopping center. I got out of the truck and ran over to take several photos of the early spring blooms. I saw that there were dozens more buds on the cacti getting ready to open up.
Our hedgehog cacti are likewise getting ready to bloom with their hot pink flowers. We have some beavertail cacti that will also bloom soon. I can’t wait! Click on the image to enlarge.
I bought a dozen of these “Gelato” roses at the supermarket today. They have the same name as the Italian ice cream. I believe we saw a shade of gelato similar to the color of these roses when we were in Rome. Click on the image to enlarge.
Oh, that bowl with daffodils that I posted about the other day, the daffodils have all opened.
Bob ran to the store today to get a few things for us this week. While he was there, he picked up four more bunches of unopened daffodil stems and brought them home. Simce all the bud vases are currently busy with the daffodils I brought home last week, I had to get out my Waterford rose bowl to contain the new stems. Some a r already beginning to open. I love spring. It was 80 ° today and I think that warmer temperatures won’t be far away. Click on the image to enlarge.
We had a rather un-spring like day today, but it felt like spring in the flower vase in the little bathroom. I bought these lovely daffodils while grocery shopping on Thursday. How pretty! Click on the image to enlarge.
