Category: Nature
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Joshua Trees and Wild Palms
We spent last weekend at Joshua Tree National Park, hiking among the giant yuccas and granite tors and photographing blooming cacti and Mojave wildflowers that were new to me. The park is not grazed, so desert plants are astonishingly abundant, diverse, and healthy: wildflowers, flowering shrubs, cacti, desert trees, and of course the famous giant yuccas. I…
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Desert Anemone
This is the desert anemone, Anemone tuberosa. It is a close relative of the wood anemone (A. nemorosa) of the Eastern forest, but the desert plant is more succulent and usually has some pink shading on the flowers. Today I gathered anemone leaves for a tincture. The active compound is anemonin, which slows the heart…
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Desert Wildflowers
Wildflowers are beginning to bloom under the saguaros – golden poppies, purple larkspur and lupine, dark blue chia, yellow corydalis, and others. Many of them have close relatives in the eastern deciduous forest. In the desert, the show of color is all the more welcome because it happens only when there is sufficient winter rain,…
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Lunar Eclipse
Mostly cloudy today, but cleared up in time to view the first half of the lunar eclipse. Cloud veils are drifting in now, obscuring the red moon at totality, but we got a clear photo first, just as the coyotes began to howl. Molten silver in the moment before melting, when the metal is still…
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Ice Lamp Moon
Today’s New Moon is the Ice Lamp Moon in my personal moon calendar. I named it when I was 13, in reference to the Winter Orchid or Puttyroot (Aplectrum hyemale) that grew in the woods near my house. The plant has a single leaf that sprouts in September and persists through the winter, dying back…
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A Winter Solstice Poem
WINTER SOLSTICE SUNRISE (Lorena B. Moore, 1990) In some hollow hall behind the dawn Silent copper horns are blackening In the tarnished penumbra of the year. In that last hour before the old brittle sun Freezes to shards in a dark burst of metal, A deep, molten hum breaks out of the ground. The winds…
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Desert Ferns Webpages
Today I uploaded my webpages on Arizona’s xerophytic ferns. There is an introductory page and a field guide. It’s not finished, but comments and suggestions are welcome. http://www.mineralarts.com/ferns/desertferns.html I won’t be able to photograph more ferns until the winter rains bring them back to life, so the project will be on the shelf until after…
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