EskDale Flowers--Part II

It's been a great spring for wild flowers in Snake Valley. If you haven't already, be sure to check out Part I of Flowers around EskDale.  I found so many that I had to split it into two posts!

Here are some more beauties on the landscape:

A selenium-loving spear of yellow: Desert princesplume (Stanleya pinnata)

Getting ready to bloom: Fragrant White Sand Verbena (Abronia elliptica)

Bright yellow shrub: Nuttall's horsebrush (Tetradymia nuttalli)

And then I got distracted by American Avocets in the reservoir. They were happily eating little invertebrates in the murky water.

I got a little too close, though, and spooked them.

Flowers in the Sunflower family with no leaves on the stem: naked stemmed daisy (Enceliopsis nudicaulis)

A low-lying plant with flowers about the color of yellow fluorescent markers: 

Shockley's buckwheat (Eriogonum shockleyi)

A beautiful penstemon about a foot high: Steptoe Valley Beardtongue (Penstemon immanifestus)

A tiny white flower at the end of very hairy nutlets: bearded cryptantha (Cryptantha barbigera)

A dandelion-like flower (with a pollinator!): Modoc hawksbeard (Crepis modocensis)

A cute flower: shaggy fleabane (Erigeron pumilis)

This shrub is dotting the sagebrush areas and brightening it up: Mormon tea (Ephedra viridis)

And a stop to enjoy a gopher snake.

The diminutive: whitestem blazing star (Mentzelia albicaulisi)

It made me feel so good to see so many interesting flowers--almost like I was on a treasure hunt! Besides looking for different flowers, it's fun to watch the lizards scurry around, observe the numerous burrows, watch the grasshoppers jump, and see which flowers, grasses, and shrubs are most predominant. Best of all is taking deep breaths of the clean air. We are fortunate to live in such a beautiful place.

Spring Wildflowers around EskDale

I usually spend one morning a week in EskDale, and the last two weeks I've seen some terrific wildflowers. Here are most of them, with links to the A Plant a Day blog, which is an excellent site if you'd like to learn the plants of the central Great Basin.

A splash of orange: Gooseberryleaf Globemallow, also called Currant-leaf Desert Mallow (Sphaeralcea grossulariifolia)

Cryptantha--one of many!

A small shrub with yellow flowers: bud sagebrush (Picrothamnus desertorum)

A surprising find in the early spring: tufted townsend daisy (Townsendia scapigera)

One of the easier milkvetches to identify, especially when the big, spotted pods appear: Freckled Milkvetch (Astragalus lentiginosus).

This tree is already past the flower stage and into the fruit stage: Russian olive (Elaegnus angustifolia)

The desert may not look very colorful from afar, but once you start spotting flowers, you find more and more!

A tiny plant with surprisingly bright flowers: Spiny Milkwort (Polygala subspinosa)

Splashes of white on the desert floor: Tufted Evening Primrose (Oenothera caespitosa) 

A mass of pink and green: Winged Four O'clock (Mirabilis alipes)

A field of purple (and white): cleftleaf wildheliotrope (Phacelia crenulata)

A stately, elegant flower with a poisonous punch: foothill deathcamas (Zigadenus paniculatus)

Leaves feathery and gray-green with a two-inch ball of flowers: globe springparsley (Cymopterus globosus).

The eyecatching desert Indian paintbrush (Castilleja angustifolia

A spray of white: mountain pepperweed (Lepidium montanum)

A spark of yellow: western wallflower (Erysimum capitatum)

I thought I was done, but I went back out to EskDale today and found even more! 

So there will be a part 2, that even includes some animals.

If you like flowers, check out this post about flowers in Pole Canyon in Great Basin National Park.

Dead Trees along the Park Road

 This summer a number of pinyon pines along the park road turned red quickly. Many people asked what was going on, and the park asked a Forest Service entomologist who specializes in tree pathogens and insects to visit. She examined the trees and found two insects: pitch mast borer and sawfly. Pitch mast borer goes into the bark and the tree reacts by pushing out big balls of sap along the trunk. Sawfly enters via the needles and lays larvae that then cause the needles to fall out. Trees attacked by sawflies typically appear to be very sparse and have lots of red needles under them. Trees don't die from pitch mast borer or sawfly alone, but both of those weaken the trees. The combination of them along with the trees being in a pollution corridor and receiving extra salt in the winter and being in a drought most likely did them.

I took some photos of the dead trees and then after a saw crew from Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park cut them down.

1A Near turnoff to Baker Creek road, before cutting.

 1B. Near turnoff to Baker Creek Road, after cutting.

 2A. Approaching dump station, before cutting.

2B. Approaching dump station, after cutting.

 3A. At dump station turn, before cutting.

3B. At dump station turn, after cutting.

Most of the trees were chipped. The saw chips will cook in the heat of the day and kill the insects in them. The bigger limbs were cut up and will be used for fire wood in the interpretive programs.

New Plants

Ready to learn some new plants in Snake Valley? Every day a new one is featured on the blog A Plant a Day.

So far this isn't as spectacular a wildflower year as last year, but there are still quite a few beautiful flowers out right now, including these Nakedstem Sunrays (Enceliopsis nudicaulis).

The Desert Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja angustifolia) is really lighting up sagebrush areas, providing sparks of color.

So pop on over A Plant a Day if you'd like to see what else is blooming and learn a few plants.

Going Dry with Color!

This time of year is always a dismal time for me. Indian summer, my favorite season, has just passed and winter is around the corner. I hate to say goodbye to the flowers and plants that have given me so much pleasure during the summer.

But this year is a little different. Last summer was a particularly inspiring gardening season for me because I've taken on the xeriscape challenge.


Fighting the water grab has made me a lot more conscious about my personal use of water. Water used to seem so plentiful here, but after seeing the results of our depleting aquifer, I have realized that water conservation is a personal responsibility, as well as community responsibility. And it's true for Snake Valley users as well as for Las Vegas users.

Although I've been intrigued with the concept of xeriscape which is growing plant species that are soil-and-water-friendly in dry environments, I haven't liked much of what I have seen. Landscaping with rocks and straggly plants just didn't inspire my green thumb. But after combing the Internet for ideas, I finally took the plunge, ripped out some lawn, and ordered dozens of plants from a nursery in New Mexico.

I absolutely love the result! These plants have bloomed all summer and fall, only stopping after a really hard frost. They have wonderful fragrance - light and spicy, and attract hummingbirds and bees. As promised, they take very little water, tolerate the alkaline soil, and as an added bonus, tasty really nasty to rabbits and chipmunks!

This is one of my favorite plants although it's not a particularly fragrant plant. It's called wild 4 o'clock. The flowers open up in the morning and evening, closing during the hottest part of the day. I only have 3 plants, but in the first season, they've covered an area of about 15 square feet, and are loaded with bright pink flowers.

These gaillardia have been beautiful all summer, nicely mounded and covered with flowers. I don't know if I should have been picking the spent flowers. I still have a lot to learn about handling some of these plants and may be doing a lot of weeding next summer if they've produced as many seeds as I think they have.

I even incorporated the mandatory dry stream bed that so many xeriscape gardens seem to have.

For a woodland look, I planted several varieties of penstemon. These were a little slower to take off, but by the end of the season, this part of the garden looked and smelled like the undergrowth in a pine forest. The nursery instructions said it would take up to three seasons for these plants to reach full maturity, but they were beautiful during the first season.

So... for my first season of xeriscape gardening, I've avoided landscaping with rocks. The beauty and fragrance of these desert plants is simply amazing. I am more enthusiastic than ever. The cold winter months will be filled with dreams of new landscapes to conquer.

Whether or not my small part in reducing the "water footprint" makes any difference in the larger scheme of things, I get a personal satisfaction knowing that I have a beautiful garden that is truly part of the desert I love.

Snake Valley Plants

Snake Valley and the surrounding mountains are home to over 1,ooo plant species. The great diversity is largely due to a range of elevation that exceeds 8,000 feet from the valley bottom to the mountain tops. 

If you'd like to learn more about the plants in Snake Valley, there are two resources available:

A Plant a Day, a blog that features a Snake Valley plant every day;

and Flora of the Snake Range, an online key that can help you figure out what plants you might be seeing.