Arizona in Bloom

Arizona cacti and flowers in springtime

This spring I witnessed something I’d been hoping to see for years, the cacti and flowers of the Arizona desert in bloom. We’ve being visiting Mesa, Arizona for years now, usually in late fall. I’ve come to love the Sonoran desert landscape. The diversity, varied shading and shaping of the vegetation shattered my preconceptions of a barren flat sandy terrain. Instead I found richness and strength. I began to wonder what the plants looked like when they flowered.

I was not disappointed. I couldn’t help but smile every time I saw the intense colours and graceful quality of the blooms amid the thorns and prickles.

Delicate flowers in vibrant colours adorned the edges of the prickly pear paddles, their tissue-like appearance a stark contrast to the spiny base upon which they grow.

When the prickly pear blooms fade, the edible fruit forms. The bulbous fruit is normally ready for harvest in the late summer or fall. Its culinary uses include jams, jellies, juices and candy.

I was delighted by all the colours and varieties of cacti blooms – burgundy blooms on the gnarly cholla, yellow flowers poking through the barbs at the top of the barrel cactus and red flowers standing on the endangered Arizona hedgehog.

There were plants other than cacti in the bloom – tall spiky flowers on the aloe, brilliant waves of orange fanning out on the ocotilla and wispy blooms on the fairy duster.

Thousands of yellow blossoms covered palo verde trees, Arizona’s state tree known for its greenish coloured bark. The flowers drop and scatter easily covering the ground and things around them. This can be amusing, attractive or a nuisance, depending on your point of view. We needed to vacuum my brother-in-law’s Miati after we parked it under the shade of a palo verde tree, top down, in a mall parking lot.

When searching the Internet prior to our visit, I discovered groups of people that hunt for the first wild flower blooms and report sightings. Check Desert Wildlflower Reports.

We saw a range of plants and blossoms at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum. The arboretum was founded in the 1920s to showcase the desert environment. I highly recommend visiting this park. Another good choice would have been the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden. We also visited the Park of the Canals in Mesa, where the small free Brinton Desert Botanical Garden was in full bloom. Many communities have their own garden area. We strolled through the one near us frequently. It changed from day to day as new blooms started and old ones faded.