Death Valley National Park reports
The best areas are still Jubilee Pass and Badwater Road south of Mormon Point with carpets of brown-eyed primrose leading the way. The Wildrose area is still pretty dormant, but I expect good globemallow up there next month. Panamint Valley looks to be about a week behind us, and less coverage. Brittlebush is very good at Darwin Falls.
Death Valley Wildflower Report – DesertUSA has a number of new wildflower reports
The best areas are still Jubilee Pass and Badwater Road south of Mormon Point with carpets of brown-eyed primrose leading the way. The Wildrose area is still pretty dormant, but I expect good globemallow up there next month. Panamint Valley looks to be about a week behind us, and less coverage. Brittlebush is very good at Darwin Falls.
Remember a couple of weeks ago when I mentioned there were a lot of ifs that could happen to affect the bloom? Well, I have good news and bad news. The bloom is on, with carpets of brown-eyed evening primrose along the roads in lower elevations, and patches of notchleaf phacelia and sand verbena. Desert Gold and a few belly flowers are starting to bloom, and a visitor reports a desert five-spot in bloom near the Grapevine Ranger Station.
The bad news is that the weather has been very hot for the entire month of February, with temperatures in the 80s every day for the last 2 weeks. A lot of the smaller seedlings are shriveling up and dying. Many of the plants that are blooming are stunted, smaller than usual, bolting. If the weather does not change soon, the season will be short but sweet, as there will be no followup to the well established plants not being affected so much by the hot weather.
Feb 20, 2015 EM Reports: As of Thursday, February 19th, there is a nice carpet bloom of Little Golden Poppies just east of Jubilee Pass between Mile Markers 54 and 56 on the Badwater Road. The gold flowers cover several acres of the desert floor on the north side of road, and have Fremont Phacelia and Golden Evening Primoses scattered around them. This is the biggest bloom I have seen in many years, having visited the park in March for the last ten years. With nearly three weeks of much hotter than normal temperatures, the bloom may not last too long, unless we get more moisture and cooler temperatures.
Just returned from our first Death Valley trip of the year (20 Feb) There was a nice roadside show of purple and yellow along mud canyon (
daylight pass road just east of the North Highway). Flowers in the dunes area 2 miles east of Stovepipe are just beginning to pop – there are two varieties making their appearance: One, single stalk generally 2-4 inches with very narrow (almost thread like) leaves and tiny white flowers, the other was forming a beautiful basal rosette of heart-leafs but had not yet bloomed. The Creosote along Hwy 190 near sea level is blooming.
Feb 20, 2015 Ed the Camp Host Reports: On Sunday, February 15th, I drove up to Daylight Pass north of Furnace Creek and saw a very small micro-bloom of desert annuals. The excessive heat here on the valley floor with highs in the 80s for the last two weeks is burning out many of the tinier plants. These small wildflowers were along the road just uphill from Mud Canyon.
Click read more to see Death Valley National Park Bloom Charts. If difficult to read go to Death Valley National Park and click on the charts there.
Natural History Wanderings 
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