Poppies and other wildflowers bloom in abundance in the south part of Joshua Tree | Photo: Chris Clarke Youve been there. Youve done that. Other people might have read the New York Times and hastened out to Death Valley to see the Superbloom, but you wanted something other than long lines of cars crowding the available pullouts. Maybe the thought of tourists from Akron (or Atwater Village) trampling the first hundred feet of flowers flanking the roadside left you cold.
Or maybe you were around for the pre-Instagram blooms of 2005 and 1998, so youve seen those compelling broad vistas of desert gold daisies without the overlay of social media hype, and youd like something different this time around.
Fortunately, for the next week or two, youve got just such an opportunity in the less-traveled parts of Joshua Tree National Park. And the good news is you wont be able to see the best stuff from your car, so youll have to walk around on foot - which is the only way to really see the desert.
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After all, as magnificent as Death Valley is, its a little hard to get out of sight of the other visitors along the road between Shoshone and Furnace Creek unless you really have a long hike in mind. But on a recent visit to the Cottonwood area of Joshua Tree National Park, during a gorgeous, perfect-temperatured weekend, I saw far fewer tourists than I did blossoms - and given that part of JTNPs varied topography, it was easy to escape my fellow visitors and focus on the foliage.
Joshua Tree didnt get the torrential rains that Death Valley did this winter. Thats a mixed blessing, as Death Valley National Park is still repairing millions of dollars in damage to roads and other infrastructure done by the storms that created the Superbloom.
Joshua Tree, instead, got a moderately wet few months of winter, and the bloom in the park - while better than weve seen the last couple of years - is well within the fat and squishy part of the bell curve as the last couple decades go. Call it a Regularbloom: its how the desert is supposed to look.
That doesnt mean the bloom isnt impressive. For instance, its one of the best years I can remember for bloom of Joshua Trees other yucca, the Mojave yucca a.k.a Yucca schidigera.
Yucca schidigera in bloom | Photo: Chris Clarke
Joshua trees are blooming throughout the parks upper elevations as well, though not in as great profusion as that bloom that attracted a lot of attention a few years back. But the Mojave yuccas are having a field day: few clumps dont have at least two spires of fat, waxy flowers.
Photo: Chris Clarke
Mojave yucca is one of the most common plants in the park, and youre pretty much guaranteed a show no matter where you look. And many of the parks characteristic Mojave Desert flowers, which inhabit the higher-elevation western section of the Park, are showing nicely now. Globe mallow is a good example:
Photo: Chris Clarke
Photo: Chris Clarke
But the real action seems to be along Joshua Trees southern border, where the vegetation is solidly characteristic of the Sonoran Desert rather than the Mojave.
If you head to the Parks Cottonwood area by way of the entrances in Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms, your first indication of something special happening in the Parks Sonoran Desert section comes well into your drive through Pinto Basin Road. The ubiquitous creosote bushes, now blooming their usual sparse yellow, become more thickly covered with bloom. Same goes for the desert senna, which hasnt really gotten started yet: theyll be awash in yellow blossoms mid-April, probably, looking for all the world like cottage garden wallflowers.
But keep an eye out as you start crossing the braided washes in the southern Pinto Basin. Find a safe place to pull over, grab a big jug of water and put on your hat, and take a walk. In the sandy washes, youll find the ghostlike flowers of Mentzelia, or sand blazing star:
Photo: Chris Clarke
Keep walking. Once youre out of sight of the roadway, and the possibility lowers of being rescued against your will by a well-meaning traveler, you can do things that might seem odd to the uninitiated, like lying flat on your stomach in the gravel to get a better view of the so-called belly-flowers. (Dont lie on a cactus.) This is a great opportunity to become more familiar with the procession of bloom and fade in the desert, each flower opening up, blossoming, and then withering in its turn. Different species in different places will open up on different days, and the study of that natural schedule - called phenology - offers hints over the years to climate and how its changing. In the Pinto Basin, the charming little purple bellyflowers called purple mat, a.k.a. Nama demissum, were just starting to fade a little when I took these photos on March 19;
Nama demissum | Photo: Chris Clarke
While the flat-growing spurge locally called rattlesnake weed shows little sign of slowing down in its bloom anytime soon. This is a true bellyflower, with blossoms less than a quarter inch across, and the height of the mature plant only about twice that.
Photo: Chris Clarke
Were also almost done with the season for brown-eyed primrose, one of the more common wildflowers in Joshua Tree NP, but their flowers, though slightly weather-beaten, are still fascinating.
Brown-eyed primrose, a.k.a. Camissonia claviformis | Photo: Chris Clarke
Keep walking, though some parts of the southern Pinto Basin may seem prematurely sunblasted and devoid of colors other than tan and brown. Turn the right corner in the wash and you may see something a ways off that blinds you with its vivid bloom:
First glimpse of a beavertail cactus in bloom | Photo: Chris Clarke
Its a beavertail cactus, one of the California deserts most common and most colorful pricky pears, and the Park is loaded with enough beavertail flower buds that youre guarant
