Desert Super Bloom
Just wanted to trumpet that winter rain events in the American Southwest, especially California, are setting the stage for a tremendous wildflower season there. Desert Sun has published the most recent updates to this phenomenon that is already in progress.
If you can’t travel, your own nature areas may be in color too. Below is Green-and-Gold (Chrysogonum virginianum) a plant found in rich woodlands from Virginia south into Georgia (Brandenburg 2010). The flower period is March through July, however it is rare as far as numbers to be seen (Horn, Cathcart, Hemmerly and Dahl 2018).
A March flowering member of the Lily family is Yellowbells (Fritillaria pudica) centered in the Pacific Northwest. It grows 6-12 inches tall in a variety of habitat types (woods, shrubs and meadows) (Denver Botanic Gardens 2018).
There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more-I do not know if I should call it pleasure-but something which exalts me-something which enraptures me-than to walk in the shelter’d side of a wood in a cloudy winter day, and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees, and raving over the plain. It is my best season of devotion.
Robert Burns letter to Walt Whitman in Specimen Days and Collect (2014)
