I posted about a neighbor’s Hot Pink Beavertail Flower a few days ago and now, we have our first open flowers. This is one of several beavertail cacti that Bob transplanted from the upper part of our property to the rock and cactus garden beside the RV drive. Click on the image to enlarge.
We have been expecting the hedgehog cactus flowers to open just after the first few days of spring. Well, they’re starting to open. The first two were open yesterday and a third one opened today. It looks like another will be opening tomorrow, too.
We’re still waiting on our beavertail cactus flowers which should start to open soon. Click on the image to enlarge.
I took this photo about five years ago. Light from the window above the staircase in our California house beamed onto the back of this lily to make it appear as if the lily itself was the source of illumination. Happy Easter! Click on the image to enlarge.
Our neighbors a few blocks away have a mature beavertail cactus growing in their yard. It always seems to be the first one in the area to bloom. Click on the image to enlarge.
I took this image of one of many flowers to come today. My beavertail has a lot of flower buds and should bloom any day now. I also have many, many hedgehog buds all around the lot. More photos to come as spring progresses.
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.