Ocotillo fireworks

Ocotillo blooming in the Anza Borrego desert, California

This tree/shrub has long branches, each starting at the ground and reach up to twenty feet each. The branches are covered with one-inch long spines and presently they are covered with supple green leaves. When the desert dries out, the leaves will dry and fall but when another rain comes, It will put out leaves again to last till they too dry out and fall… This may repeat as many as eight times per year. I don’t know how often the plant blooms but they are blooming right now… I’ll post a macro of the flowers later. The Ocotillo is the fireworks plant of the desert… like a bunch of skyrockets.

Peace

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 15th, 2005 at 1:43 AM. It is filed under Uncategorized and tagged with -print available-, california, desert, flowers, plants, tree. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.