Natural History Wanderings

Death Valley National Park  has a new wildflower report for May 1,2014

As temperatures warm up, the wildflowers in lower elevations are fading, but in the Panamint Mountains the party is just getting started. Along the Emigrant Canyon Road, the high desert valleys and hillsides are rich with flowering shrubs with blankets of annuals filling the spaces between. Along the Aguereberry Point Road there is a lovely hillside thick with globemallow, lavender broad-flowered gilia, and intensely orange mariposa lily peaking now. Watch for flowering shrubs like paperbag bush and indigo bush as you drive toward Wildrose. In the weeks to come expect an outstanding display of hopsage, with its colorful clusters of seedpods that change from yellow to pink to wine-red.

Eureka Valley flowers may be rounding things up around the dunes, but in the surrounding mountains the bloom is still going strong. Along the road from the west, watch for the yellow cotton-thorn bushes, white globemallow and an unusual form of notch-leaf phacelia with dark stems and upright growth.