The Flowers in My Backyard
Wallace’s wooly daisy (Eriophyllum wallacei) in the Nopah Range. Photos/Patrick Donnelly.
By Patrick Donnelly
When you’re in love with the Mojave Desert, and I mean really head-over-heels in love, spring is truly the peak of existence. For most of the year, desert rats idle away the days in umber hues of brown, orange, gray, black, and yes, if there’s been rain, that sort of olive-hued green that signifies life but not too much of it. But for a brief period in the spring–maybe a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months in a good year–the desert bursts forth in a rainbow of yellows, pinks, reds, purples, blues. A veritable kaleidoscope of wildflowers, a desperate race by desert flora to get in their entire reproductive cycle before the piercing heat and desiccating winds of early summer set in and set everything to another long year of dormancy only to erupt again in a reproductive frenzy the next spring.
I’ve had many memorable springs in the desert–the “superbloom” years of 2005 and 2016 loom large in my psyche and have in many ways defined who I am, and the occupation and avocations I have chosen to pursue in life. But none are memorable quite the way the spring of 2020 was memorable.
I needn’t recount the first few weeks of March 2020 in too much detail, as the creeping understanding of the scope and scale of the global coronavirus pandemic became clear. We were all uncertain about our future. My job involves lots of travel and lots of meetings, so the lifestyle I was accustomed to ground to a halt rapidly. I already worked from home, in between travel, so while I was used to rolling out of bed and into my office, the pandemic still changed everything.
I’m lucky enough to live in rural Nevada, in a valley surrounded by no fewer than five mountain ranges, ranging in height from a few thousand feet to almost twelve thousand. While the basin where I live is an alkali sink, the mountains surrounding my home catch more precipitation due to their height, and both the canyons where that water flows and the springs formed at the base of those mountains are oases of biodiversity among the hottest, driest desert in North America. And while I have been exploring these canyons and springs for many years, in the spring of 2020 I gained a new appreciation for the landscapes that make my home so beautiful.
Climate change has generally meant changes in precipitation patterns in the Mojave Desert. Winter rains have been delayed in recent years. But one of the harbingers of a good wildflower season is early rains – coming before the first frost, to give seeds of annual plants a little early boost in germination. In November 2019, my valley got 1.05” of rain. That may not sound like much, but it is 20% of our annual average, so it was significant. December brought another 0.81”. But then those changing precipitation patterns kicked in, and through January and February we received only 0.16”. It was shaping up to be a dry spring. That is, until we had a “Miracle March,” increasingly common in recent years, when we got almost two inches. The stage was set.
A March 2020 rainstorm along the Amargosa River.
I was seriously freaked out by the pandemic in March. I have somewhat poor respiratory health, as do my family members who live thousands of miles away. I live alone, and felt like my prospects were quite grim indeed should I become infected. Every morning seemed like a new exercise in terror, as the bad news flooded in and the world seemed on the brink of collapse.
My work is flexible enough that I reduced my hours to focus on maintaining my sanity. And I did so by hiking, every day, in my big backyard. When I am walking in the desert, pushing myself hard climbing canyons and peaks, is the only time I’m truly at peace. And peace was sorely needed during the first weeks of the pandemic. So I hiked.
The first few weeks of March, when the bloom in the north Mojave is usually peaking, made me think that we might not have a spring at all. As late as March 21, I was seeing nothing more than a handful of species, a few scattered chia (Salvia columbariae) and showy gilia (Gilia cana subsp. speciformis) in particularly stunted form. Perhaps a bleak spring would match the bleak feeling one got doom scrolling all day.
A tiny showy gilia (Gilia cana subsp. speciformis) in the Nopah Range.
Bigelow monkeyflower (Diplacus bigelovii) in the Last Chance Range.
But those mid-March rains were like dumping gasoline on smoldering embers. On a relatively routine hike up a rocky limestone canyon on March 29, I encountered bountiful clusters of one of my favorite flowers, Bigelow monkeyflower (Diplacus bigelovii), as well as lesser mohavea (Mohavea brevifolia) and notch-leafed phacelia (Phacelia crenulata).
And from then, the bloom was on. A week later I found a canyon chock full of Wallace’s wooly daisy (Eriophyllum wallacei). Within another week or two I was routinely encountering 30 to 40 blooming species on every hike. Perennials like purple sage (Salvia dorii), desert wishbone bush (Mirabilis laevis subsp. retrorsa), and the ubiquitous California buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum var. polifolium), so humble throughout much of the year, were brilliantly and abundantly blooming around every corner. I found the beautiful and tiny roundleaf phacelia (Phacelia rotundifolia) growing in rocky crevasses, a flower that was new to me after 16 years of hunting flowers in the desert.
California buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum var. polifolium) in the Resting Spring Range.
Roundleaf phacelia (Phacelia rotundifolia) in the Spring Range.
Later still in April, the rare flowers came into form. I had a couple of expeditions to see a plant I’m working to protect as part of my job, the rare white-margined beardtongue (Penstemon albomarginatus), which grows on sandy soils and coppice dunes at the base of certain volcanic hills in Nye and Clark Counties. A trip to Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge—a place I’ve frequented many times—found the Ash Meadows milkvetch (Astragalus phoenix) showing the last of its beautiful, delicate pink blooms as it was beginning to produce its fuzzy fruit.
White-margined beardtongue (Penstemon albomarginatus) in Amargosa Valley.
Ash Meadows milkvetch (Astragalus phoenix) near Devils Hole.
The fuzzy fruits of the Ash Meadows milkvetch (Astragalus phoenix).
Later into May, the bloom moved up in elevation. A trip to the rugged Kingston Range, just over the border in California, revealed beautiful blooms of the Parry’s giant nolina (Nolina parryi), and the rare Stephen’s penstemon (Penstemon stephensii) being fed on by a Costa’s hummingbird (Calypte costae). Pollinators were enjoying every minute of the bloom in the Kingstons, as I also caught a desert black swallowtail butterfly (Papilio polyxenes coloro) nectaring on a bladdersage (Scutellaria mexicana).
A female Costa’s hummingbird (Calypte costae) nectaring at Stephen’s penstemon (Penstemon stephensii).
A desert black swallowtail butterfly (Papilio polyxenes coloro) nectaring on a bladdersage (Scutellaria mexicana).
The juxtaposition between the beauty of Mojave Desert in full, unabashed bloom and the darkness that was enveloping the world could not have been more stark. The juxtaposition of my privileged place in life, where I could jaunt around the desert in my backyard photographing wildflowers while millions of people lost their jobs and were fending off insolvency and homelessness, could also not have been more stark.
But for the rest of my life, I will remember the bloom of 2020. During the tumult and fear of the beginning of the pandemic, my life was defined by the rolling tide of the bloom, moving upward in elevation across the desert, and how I began to understand my home as something more than the place I rest my head. The desert is the center of my universe, and while I enjoy traveling across it for my work and my pleasure, there’s nothing quite like the experience of, day after day, tracking beauty in your own backyard.
Fremont phacelia (Phacelia fremontii) in the Spring Range.
Patrick Donnelly is Nevada state director for the Center for Biological Diversity and lives on the edge of Death Valley in rural Nye County, Nevada. He has been involved in desert conservation for 17 years, as a restoration project manager, outdoor educator, grassroots activist, executive director of a small non-profit, and now as an advocate for the wildlife and wild places of Nevada.
You can find Patrick on social media @bitterwaterblue.
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