Wildflowers
by: Michael E. Quigley

It’s springtime in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona. And it’s a glorious time to be here. In other, colder, snow-prone parts of the country, spring is a time of reawakening and rebirth—a relief from the preceding months of cold and darkness. But the rough season here is summer: weeks of over-100–degree days; sun so hot it hurts; shade and water more precious than diamonds.

But summer’s still a few weeks away. And maybe that sense of impending inactivity makes springtime here even more vibrant, more noticeable, more urgent. Like one’s last season of little-league, or one’s last day of vacation. And this year, springtime is nothing if not vibrant and noticeable. We had good rains late last year and this winter. And good rains mean good spring wildflowers.

I live on a small piece of desert on the outskirts of Tucson. I chose this place because of its natural beauty. I still refer to the “yard”—but there’s no lawn, no shrubbery. What there is, is natural Sonoran desert; and lots of it: acacia trees, triangle-leaf bursage, saguaro-, barrel-, cholla-, prickly pear-, and a dozen other species of cactus. And this year: wildflowers! By the thousands. By the hundreds of thousands.

The grand show started a couple of weeks ago with wild mustard—small yellow blooms atop long, wiry stems. They showed up first by the mailbox, and then along the wall of the house. A week or so later, bladderpods, small yellow vases of nectar, appeared by the hundreds on patches of ground sheltered by palo verde trees or larger creosote bushes. Next were the twistflowers, intermixing with the bladderpods and moving into unsheltered spaces. Beside the delicate low blooms of the bladderpods and twistflowers, the spindly mustards were beginning to look like weeds. Which got me thinking about the whole notion of weeds, and the poverty of turf-builder-perfect, low-mowed grass lawns with not so much as a dandelion to give them depth or color, or lasting interest—like some industrial art painting of a green square where there could be a Monet.

I’m relatively new to the area; and this is the first spring I’ve seen such a colorful natural display. Long-time residents speak of spring flower blooms like easterners speak of snowstorms or Californians speak of earthquakes: “Yeah, this year’s good; but nothing like the spring of ’68.” “’68? Hmmph. The bloom of ’79—now that was something to see.”

Walking around the house, I can only wonder what a great year looks like if this is only a “good” year. I’ve seen bad years, though; like last year. Last year, we had almost no rain and even the creosote looked like it was struggling—its airy, slender branches seared; one could almost see the water draining out of them. Since last year, I’ve done nothing to the “yard”—no seeding, no fertilizing, no watering—and yet right now there are thousands of wildflowers where last year there was nothing—or at least I thought there was nothing. And, flowers are growing everywhere! Between the tire ruts of the dirt driveway. Around a shovel left out from last year’s tree planting. On top of a mound of poor fill dirt I’d planned to use for grading but hadn’t gotten to yet—as if to tell me the world has a schedule of its own.

Wanting to know more, I bought a field guide to wildflowers and set out the front door last Sunday afternoon. Now I know that those little, miniature-daisy-like flowers by the door are desert star. And that those delicate orange blooms that turn in on themselves and hang singly like inverted paper lanterns are globe mallow. I’d known that the orange flower by the prickly pear cactus was Mexican poppy, but now know that the upright scarlet-purple tufts next to it are owl’s clover.

I’d hoped to find a half-dozen or so different species of flowers in the yard. But, the more I looked, the more I found: trixis, brittlebush, desert marigold, chia, scorpion weed. And the closer I looked, the more I found. Tiny, tiny flowers like hairy deer vetch and popcorn flower. Blooms no bigger than a set diamond, on stems that just barely reach over stones for the sun. My field guide calls them “belly” flowers; because you about have to get down on your belly to get low enough to see them. Well, that’s what my third field guide calls them. I—or, rather, my wildflower bounty—had outgrown the first two guides.

Energized by the yard, I took a drive—a “wildflower safari” a friend calls it. I’d received a tip on a good area. Not quite a dark-alley whisper—“Psst. Hey, buddy. Mexican poppies and owl’s clover by Kitt Peak,”—but with all the anticipation and promise of such. And my tipster had proof of his claim: photographs taken the week before. So, come Saturday, I packed water and film and took off down the road.

I’d seen my friend’s photographs, and I’d seen the absolutely glorious photos in Arizona Highways magazine—those two-page spreads with a multicolored carpet of wildflowers spread over acres of desert, lying against mountains, under a saturated blue sky. Yeah, I’d seen the photographs. But I’d always harbored a suspicion that they were artificially composed, that it was some trickery of angles and lighting that produced those stunning centerfold scenes. As if the flowers weren’t really that tightly packed; weren’t really that stunningly colorful and perfect.

But let me tell you: I have been to the primrosed land; and I’m a believer.

As I counted down the mile markers to the place my friend had recommended, having marked it on the map like some secret hidden-treasure spot, patches of poppies and owl’s clover burst through the filter of 50 miles-per-hour. More wildflowers the next mile. Still more after that. And even more after that! The increasing display of color matched by my escalating exclamations: “Oh wow. Oh Wow! OH WOW!!” When I stopped, and walked a ways off the road, I truly had found treasure: acres, whole hillsides, strewn—nay, matey, awash—with the gold of poppies and the white-silver halo of evening primrose. Accents of lupine here; a symphony of spreading fleabane and filaree, there. A mixture so grand, so sublime, no mix of metaphors can fully describe it.

Surrounded by such beauty on such a simultaneously miniature and grand scale, I was in peace; warm, sated, revived, reconnected—by a million small glories. Like the Wizard of Oz, I walked, and sat, and breathed—surrounded by a million small glories. I dreamed: if only our political leadership had a brain; our system, a heart; our society, courage; perhaps these special places could be spared the developers’ blade—that scythe of progress which daily plows under a million small glories. In that field, I dreamed. The breeze running down the hillside whispered, “Leave it alone; leave it alone and they will come.” The owl’s clover, the lupine, the poppies, the penstemon. And with them will come the hummingbirds and the songbirds. And with them, the music of the world. And with that, all that, our salvation. All from a patch of wildflowers.

Yes, it’ll be hot here soon. Really hot. Too hot and dry for delicate wildflowers. Too hot for safaris. Too hot, maybe, even for salvation. But today, this week, it’s springtime in the
Sonoran desert of southern Arizona. And it’s Glorious.

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Copyright, Michael E. Quigley; contact the author for more information.