Natural History Journal

As you may already know, I adore California's deserts: high deserts redolent with sagebrush, low deserts of sunny cactus gardens and shaded palm oases, and mid-elevation deserts with Joshua Tree forests and pure stands of fragrant creosote bush. Vibrant colors after a spring rain at Mojave National Preserve California is home to three distinct desert ecosystems: the Great Basin, Mojave and Colorado deserts.  Beyond California's borders, the Colorado desert flows seamlessly into the Sonoran desert of Arizona; the fourth North American desert, the Chihuahuan desert, reaches the southeastern corner of Arizona and covers a portion of southern New Mexico and western Texas. Late winter and spring are the ideal times to visit California's deserts, and for the past several years, we've been fortunate enough to make annual pilgrimages to some of these special places.  This year, of course, travel is out of the question.  We will be staying home, admiring photos and vide...

Perhaps, just perhaps, there is a place where dinosaurs walk among us.    Common Chuckwalla, peering out from beneath a shrub in Borrego Palm Canyon   Perhaps the Colorado Desert of California is another "Isla Nublar" and Jurassic Park could also take place here, amongst ocotillos and chollas... rather than Isla Sorna's Coast Redwoods that would never be found growing on tropical Costa Rican islands in the present day, never grew there in the past, and were not even around during the reign of the dinosaurs at all.    (This is what happens when botanists watch Hollywood films...  Though I realize Coast Redwoods are ancient trees that grew during the warm, wet climate of the past, they flourished across the northern hemisphere during the Tertiary Period (65-1.6 million years ago), which is known as the beginning of the age of mammals and took place after the extinction of the dinosa...

Oh, the Apricot Globe Mallow!  Be still my heart!  This humble mallow is perhaps my favorite desert shrub, bursting forth as it does in glorious coraly-salmon bloom.  (Some sources call the blooms "orange," but once you spend some time with this plant you will see that bland description doesn't quite do the color justice.)   Apricot Globe Mallow (also called Desert Globe-mallow, Desert Mallow, Apricot Mallow, Globe Mallow or seemingly any other combination of those words) is a member of the mallow family (Malvaceae) along with the familiar garden hollyhock.  The plant is a shrubby perennial that grows from about 1 to 3 feet tall and wide, depending on its location.  The leaves are gray, fuzzy and roundish with scalloped edges, much like those of a hollyhock.   Apricot Globe Mallow with Joshua Trees, Joshua Tree National Park This globe mallow is found across the desert southwest on dry, rocky slopes as well as sa...

The Colorado Desert, the portion of the Sonoran Desert that spills over into California, is a wonderfully diverse ecosystem, botanically speaking.  The Sonoran Desert extends across southern Arizona and south into Mexico and Baja California on both sides of the Gulf of California.  In the state of California, we are lucky to claim a little corner of the Sonoran Desert as our own.  The assemblage of plant life in California's Colorado Desert is markedly different from our more northerly Mojave Desert.  The Colorado Desert, like other regions of the Sonoran Desert, experiences two rainy seasons, one in winter and a second at the end of summer.  This allows for a greater diversity of species here than in the adjacent Mojave Desert. Chollas, with blooming Desert Senna ( Cassia armata ) A drive through Joshua Tree National Park allows visitors to experience both desert ecosystems.  The northern part of the park...