MINERALARTS:

Today we hiked in Madera Canyon, the famous birdwatcher’s paradise in the Santa Rita Mountains not far from our house.  It’s a popular hiking area in beautiful Madrean evergreen oak/pine woodland.  Today there were very few birds (though we did spot a sulphur-bellied flycatcher in a sycamore tree).  We followed a creek that flowed through a rocky canyon full of trumpetilla, scarlet cinquefoil, and other summer forest wildflowers.  We saw two rare orchids:  Hexalectris warnockii, a beautiful coralroot with deep purple flowers (unfortunately it had already bloomed, so we just saw the ripening seedpods) and  Malaxis corymbosa, a Sierra Madre plant that grows in the U.S. only in shady wooded canyons in the Santa Rita, Huachuca, and Chiricahua mountains of southern Arizona.  I had never seen this plant before and was delighted to make a new botanical friend.