April Blossoms in the Desert

I roamed the desert in Arizona, looking for a good shot of blooming saguaro flowers.  It's hard to get a closeup shot because the blooms mostly appear on the ends of saguaro arms which, of course, usually point upward a good distance above ground level.  To get a real closeup you have to find a saguaro with a droopy arm, close to ground level, that happens to be flowering.  Out in the bush, I never did...this was one of the best shots I found.

But, I finally did find saguaro flowers that I could shoot with a macro from close range.  They were on a cactus in the middle of Sun City, between 99th avenue and a rec center parking lot.  Late April is still a little early for peak saguaro flowers...they're most plentiful in May.  This flower is surrounded by buds...there will be a lot more blooms here in the coming weeks.

I moved on to Joshua Tree National Park.  I had read on the internet that the Mastodon Peak area, near Cottonwood campground in the southern part of the park, was a singularly good flower spot this spring.  Despite the overall dry winter in the desert southwest, this area had heavy rain in September, which closed the roads and did some damage.  The rain soaked in, and the result has been a great flower season, in just a small area.  This is a silver cholla flower.

Not sure of the name of this flower, but the bee likes it.

Fine beavertail cactus bloom.

Maybe an aster of some sort.

Very pretty blue flower.

Globemallows

Fine ocotillo macro.

Desert sunflowers?

Multiple blooms on a silver cholla.

The creosotes were blooming in profusion!

The lizards enjoyed the flowers.  Here they are with some mojave desert stars.

This silver cholla had dark brown flowers that I didn't see on any other plant.

At about 3200 feet, the hedgehogs were in full bloom on the Mastodon Peak trail.  They were almost all done flowering near Phoenix, at only half the elevation.  Except for the saguaro flowers in the first two pics here, all of these blooms were on the same 2 1/2 mile trail!  I can't recall ever seeing such a diversity of flowers in such a small area of the desert!  A ranger told me there were about 100 different species here.

A balanced rock...no, it wasn't placed here...freezing, thawing, and erosion sculpted the scene.

Here's a handsome lizard.  He had a fine black and brown tail, but I couldn't get a good shot of it.

A historic photo!  For the first time ever, my lizards met a non-bionic member of their species!  The lizard in the previous pic can be seen warily eyeing my saurians from the right edge of the picture.  Lizard and Verde were excited to meet a kindred spirit.

Fine rockpile in JTNP.

Teddy bear cholla flower.  Look but don't touch!

Late in the afternoon, clouds began moving in from the southwest.  These fine lenticular clouds were followed by showers the next day.