Wildflower Alert

A continuing string of warm days and cool evenings have encouraged the flowers at lower elevations in the Morongo Basin and Joshua Tree National Park to go crazy. In town the yellow dandelions and brown-eyed primroses are decorating the street corners, vacant lots, medians, and roadsides.

There are plenty of options this year and the season is just beginning.

Utah Trail - south to Cottonwood and beyond

Joshua Tree National Park begins the show before you reach the kiosk on Utah Trail. For a beautiful and easy walk park before the kiosk at the pull-out on your right, and walk west toward the ridge. Look for blue phacelia crowding the creosote bushes, yellow coreopsis and gold cups providing the carpet, and yellow fiddlenecks and white-forget-nots adding the accents. In the sandy washes pink nama and Bigelow’s monkeyflower will repay a closer look. Also flat on the ground, in areas with rocky pavement, multiple constellations of desert star dazzle. The south facing slopes and hillsides are covered with gold cups.

Continue driving up and over the spine of the Park toward Cottonwood. Except at the higher elevations there are flowers all along the way. A few miles south of the visitor center there is a solid carpet of dandelions with blue lupine on your left. On your right the yellow desert poppy provides colorful swaths. The blue chia, lupine, and canterbury bells are common. Chuperosa (Spanish for hummingbird) is the bush with tubular red flowers. The palo verde trees are also starting to bloom.

Box Canyon

Proceed south, cross over I-10 and head into Box Canyon for more flowers. Box Canyon is worth the trip for the geology alone: it is where the San Andreas Fault crosses through bad land sediments uplifting and contorting the sandy layers. Lupine, brittlebush and much more are thick along the roadside.

Conspicuous flowering shrubs along the main roads are bladder pod with yellow flowers and hanging pods, brittlebush crowned with yellow sunflowers, and, at lower elevations, chuperosa with red tubular flowers.

In the washes, Brandegea is the vine with small white flowers and fingered leaves growing all over the shrubs. The plant is named in honor of newly wed botanists, Townsend and Mary Katherine Brandegee, who, in the late 1800s, spent their honeymoon hiking from San Diego to San Francisco collecting flowers along the way. This vine grows rapidly from a thick underground tuber and is able to respond to both summer and winter rains.

Ironage Road

For a different scene, drive 23 miles east of Twentynine Palms to Ironage Road, turn left and drive another 2 miles. The Sheephole Mountains are on your right and Dale Dry Lake on your left. On the left (west) side of the road the large white, four-petaled flowers of the dune primrose cover the sand. Walking the area you will see their “bird-cage” remains from previous years. The seedpods cling to the dried stems of the “cage”. When it rains the pods swell open to release their seeds. This area will only get better as the season progresses.

49 Palms Canyon

If you want a medium strenuous hike with flowers along the way, try 49 Palms Canyon. To get there go west on Hwy 62 to Canyon Dr. (Veterinary Hospital on corner) turn left and follow the road to the parking lot. The rocky canyon with sandy washes provides nooks and crannies for diverse annuals and flowering shrubs. It is about 3 miles round trip and you will see water at the grove.