Taken yesterday morning at dawn on the Latigo Trail in McDowell Sonoran Preserve. I went hiking before work as I woke up early but the real surprise was yet to come …
Category: Plants
Fruit of the Soaptree
The fruit of a soaptree yucca grows at the end of the tall flower stalk, this one was leaning over the trail at dawn.
Could You Point Me Towards the Latigo Trail?
Ah, thanks, much obliged!
(Taken before sunrise near the Brown’s Ranch Trailhead where I start many of my hikes, to give you a flavor of how I start my mornings on the trails, the desert feels magical to me in these moments. The helpful plant is a soaptree yucca with its flower stalk, now laden with fruit, leaning over. The trail winds through the saguaros beyond and is a great place for birdwatching, further down is where I’ve photographed mule deer, javelina, white-winged doves, one of the Harris’ hawk families, one set of Gila woodpecker parents, and lots of other wildlife.)
📷: Sony A6500 | Sony-Zeiss 16-70mm
🗓️: June 28, 2019
Candy Dish
Flowers bloom atop a barrel cactus along the Chuckwagon Trail in May of 2018. I photographed several different barrels blooming last year but this year I didn’t see any that struck my fancy, perhaps I was too distracted by hawks and lizards and woodpeckers. The circle of buds and blossoms at the top reminds me of a candy dish full of brightly colored candies, we have a small one in the backyard with what looks like some buds just starting to form, I’m curious to see if it will bloom this summer.
Drip Drip Drip
Water seemed suspended in time as it dripped from the flower buds at the end of a horizontal arm of a saguaro, but I suspect the frozen drips must have been sap. I didn’t know saguaros budded like this when we moved here so I was delighted to discover buds fairly close to the ground that I could observe up close.
Prickly, Lovely
I’m still early in my learning what plants grow in the Sonoran Desert, even after having lived here a year I’m mostly in the “I think that’s a tree” stage of identification. Keep that in mind when I say I think this lovely if prickly plant is a Southwestern prickly poppy. I appreciated how it so thoughtfully bloomed that I could show both the beauty in its flower and the abundance of prickles everywhere else. I recently picked up a guide to the wildflowers of McDowell Sonoran Preserve by Marianne Skov Jensen (@ezpixels on Instagram), they sell it (and the overall field guide which I also bought) at some of the trailheads on the weekends. It will greatly speed up my learning process, it’s extensively photographed and was clearly a labor of love.
The second shot below is similar but with shallower depth of field, it emphasizes the flower more but it doesn’t show as well how the plant is covered in prickles.
Explosion
The shape of the branches of this blooming palo verde made it seem to me as though it was literally exploding with color. I had to hoof it out there to arrive as the sun was about to clear the slopes of Cone Mountain behind me, I only had a brief moment for pictures as immediately after this shot clouds obscured the sun and the light was gone.
Dawn
A world departs
A world begins
A world apart
while I reach for heaven
The sun will rise
the wind will blow
and bring me low
down
I know the cost
it is my life
I will reach for heaven
Finding Purchase
A Coulter’s lupine finds purchase in the cracks between rocks up above the Sonoran Desert on the way to Sunrise Peak.
The Desert in Bloom
First light falls on the California poppies and Coulter’s lupines blooming in front of the rock formation I call the Guardian. Haven’t had much time and/or energy for hiking the past few weeks but thankful I was able to get out for a few hours last week to see the desert in bloom. This was my first time seeing the Sonoran Desert bloom like this. The picture below is from a few minutes earlier in a slightly different position, clouds in the east mostly blocked the sunrise light but a little bit of red light fell upon the landscape before coming on strong for a few minutes as shown above. I like them both.
We arrived in Arizona a year ago today, how thankful I am we ended up in this wonderful place.
Boolie 