Hello again from the Eastern Sierra!

Life has slowed down here lately, as has my field schedule, which means that my last several weeks here in Bishop will be a time for reflection, for ending well with purpose, and for drinking in deeply and slowly all that these mountains have to offer before I leave them. Fall is the perfect season for this process of looking back in appreciation. Its smells, colors, and sensations are unmatched in their richness, and lend themselves well to afternoons spent wandering thoughtfully through trees. However, this is not the space for me to share with you all that is running through my thoughts this autumn. Instead, I’ll try as best I can to give you some sort of a picture of just how beautiful this place is right now. And I’ll throw in a little botany just for fun.

We don’t have too many deciduous trees in the Eastern Sierra, but these willows are one of them. Their yellow leaves are pretty, but just wait til we get to their more spectacular cousins

We’re talking fall colors today, and in much of the western part of the country there is one unchallenged star of the show: the quaking aspen. But before I write about these splendid trees, there are some other players I should mention. Most of the areas in which I work are filled with vast expanses of shrubs and perennial grasses, with scarcely a tree to be seen. These habitats undergo changes in autumn that are less striking than the turning of leaves on the trees, but they are beautiful nonetheless. Their display employs a more subtle range of browns and yellows, but in the warm, soft light of fall, these colors give the landscape a wonderful tone.

Shrublands like this one are where I spend most of my time for work. A bit flat. A bit monotonous. But I like them.

The showiest of these shrubs are the rabbitbrushes, a group of plants that are viewed by many with mixed feelings. These waist-high shrubs are late-season bloomers, so they have been bursting with bold, bright, yellow flowers this fall after most plants have long since gone to seed. Rabbitbrush are really abundant in many places, so as they flower they create beautiful seas of color on the land. Unfortunately, these plants can become a great annoyance, at least for allergy-sensitive humans. Their release of pollen means a steady diet of itchy eyes and runny noses for people here in Bishop, so that blooming rabbitbrush are sometimes looked upon with disdain. But they still look good.

Here’s a yellow rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus viscidiflorus). They’re very common, and not all that exciting to some people, but their bold, yellow, fall flowers are pretty great.

It might be a tough sell for me to convince you all of this, but tall, perennial grasses also add a wonderful touch of beauty to these landscapes. Now, I won’t try to deceive you with exaggerations about their colors. In the spring and summer, these grasses are green. And in the fall they dry out and turn brown. Nothing special about that. But where they shine is the way they take on a rich warmth in the long afternoon light of autumn. The light passing through their fading leaves produces varying hues of golden, and sometimes reddish, brown. It’s subtle, but it’s lovely. They are tall and abundant, so each grass’ small contribution of color adds to the charming richness of the landscape in fall, especially as they sway in unison to the afternoon breeze.

Here you go, a field full of pretty fall grass. This could almost be a prairie from my home back in Illinois, except that, you know, this place has hills.

Well, that’s my attempt at moving you with the subtle beauty of shrublands. But let’s face it, when people talk about the magic of fall colors, they don’t wax poetic about shrubs and grasses, they look to the trees. Well, in the Eastern Sierra, that means aspen. And what a show they put on!

Bam! Colorful aspens.

So let’s talk a little bit about quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides). They are the most widely distributed tree in North America, growing all over Canada, down into Mexico, and everywhere in the US except for the southeast. They grow in groves mixed with conifers on the sides of mountains, in dense pockets occurring within otherwise unbroken oceans of sagebrush, and in wet areas along streams. So they are a flexible and highly successful species.

Few trees can match the extravagance of the show put on by quaking aspen in the fall. Their simple, nearly round leaves begin to die and transform as temperatures drop and the first frosts hit in autumn. The leaves break out into dazzling cascades of bright yellow, richer gold, orange, or fiery red. When sunlight reflects off the leaves, their brightness and vibrancy is bold and blinding. When you take in the trees from below, with light filtering through their leaves, they glow with a softer gold that fills and warms everything in their shade. As the leaves fall, the ground itself takes on their yellow hue. Earning the name “quaking aspen”, the leaves spin and twirl on long, thin stalks, so that the groves of stunning colors flutter and shimmer in the wind.

Most of the aspen that I’ve been around this fall have had golden yellow leaves, but fantastic reds and oranges are sprinkled in as well.

Here in the Sierra’s we get to take in these trees against the backdrop of rugged mountains, clear, blue lakes, and deep, green conifers. The air is clear and crisp, and the colors are bold. The beauty is astounding.

You have to love the way their leaves glow and light everything up with sunlight behind them.

Aspen have some unique, funky characteristics that sometimes produce spectacular results. They reproduce using flowers on catkins, and seeds carried on the wind by fluffy, white fruits like those belonging to cottonwoods. But in my part of the country, they don’t seem to go to seed very often. Instead, they typically reproduce by root sprouts. The roots of a tree will spread out, and then sprout out of the ground, producing a clone. Most stands of aspen are made up of numerous separate patches of clones, but some stands may contain just a single, clonal individual.

It’s impossible for me to say which aspens are unique individuals and which are part of a colony of clones. I don’t know what to look for.

One such aspen clone is just about the most extraordinary organism on the planet. In Utah, there is a clonal colony of one individual male aspen, that may be the oldest and the largest single living organism in the world. The clone is named Pando, a Latin word that means “I spread.” Spread it does. According to the Forest Service, the clone covers more than 106 acres, weighs close to 13 million pounds, and has more than 40,000 trunks, all connected by the same genetically identical root system. Figuring out the age of such a plant has to be difficult, and it’s hard to have much confidence in the estimates that different scientists come up with. But those age estimates are spectacular. Some suggest that the plant is 80,000 years old. Some propose an age of 1 million years. I sure don’t know how old it is, but clearly it is an amazing, exceptional plant.

After spending last year down in the Mojave Desert without much of a fall to speak of, seeing all the colors this year is sure doing a lot of good for my soul. I hope you’re enjoying the season and its colors wherever you may be!

This wild brown trout isn’t a plant. And they are colorful all year long. But I caught this one in the fall, and it’s too beautiful to exclude it from my color blog

Until Next Time,

Steve Tillman

Bishop BLM Office

Hello Everybody!

If you’ve been paying attention to the news from the western part of the country in recent months, then you’ve probably heard about fire. Yep, there’s been lots of it. Washington, Montana, California, all over the place. Thankfully, for people anyway, fire activity here in the eastern Sierra’s has slowed of late, as we’ve received some rain and snow.

Oh, I’m sorry, you wanted a close-up shot of this mahogany forest WHILE it was actively burning? Yeah, you’re on your own for that one.

The Bishop Field Office, where I work, has had only a couple of fairly small fires near our border this year, but fire elsewhere has dramatically affected us. The Rough Fire started on July 31^st on the western side of the Sierra’s, in and around Sequoia and King’s Canyon National Parks. We caught a lot of the smoke from that fire as it drifted east over the mountains and then settled down into the Owens Valley, and it put quite the damper on the late summer. 13,000-foot mountains are just 10 miles away from Bishop, but on many days we weren’t able to see them at all. And occasional days of snowing ashes aren’t much fun either. Cooler weather and rain finally knocked this 150,000-acre fire back a few weeks ago. Wildfires like that one may be a danger and an annoyance, but they are an inevitable, and even necessary, part of life out here.

“Moonscaped” seems to be the best way to describe this site that burned in 2012.

It’s hard to say exactly what happened here. Typically, there would be new plants coming in after a fire, but here there was absolutely nothing. The fire may have been exceptionally hot, and killed everything. The soil is very sandy and ashy, and now it is blown around by the wind so much that there aren’t any new plants that have been able to establish.

Most of my workdays in recent months have revolved around fire, but I’ve been focused on past fires instead of active ones. My co-intern, Tyler, and I have spent much of our time visiting the sites of old fires, and recording data about their condition as part of an ongoing monitoring project. Most of the data we collect measures different traits about the presence, abundance, and size of different plant species that show up at these burned sites. Some sites that we’ve visited burned all the way back in the 1950’s, and others burned as recently as 2 years ago. What makes the project so important, and interesting for us, is that different sites will react to fire in dramatically variable ways. The data we collect is meant to help managers determine what causes these sites to respond differently to fire, and to track how sites change through time in the years following a fire.

Hey, you know what’s fun? Getting to drive an ATV to your work site. My job rocks.

AND we get to use lasers for collecting data at old fire sites. I know it’s hard, but try to contain your jealousy.

Fire ecology is fascinating. We spend most of our time working in lands that fall in the western portion of the Great Basin Desert, and this is an area that has adapted to burn. The estimates I’ve heard vary quite a bit, but suggest that local shrub communities would probably have burned every 50-200 years historically. Lighting would have caused some of those fires, and others would be the result of intentional burning by native people. There seems to be plenty of disagreement about just how much fire activity we can attribute to Native Americans, but it could be a whole lot. Whatever their cause, fires here were common, and the plants have adapted to deal with them.

The burn areas we work in often have these skeletons of old, burned-out shrubs still standing amidst the new plants that have come in. Seems like a nice little snapshot of death and new life and all that good stuff. Cue “The Circle of Life”

Most of the Great Basin plant communities we work with are dominated by woody shrubs (especially bitterbrush and big sagebrush) and perennial bunchgrasses (Indian ricegrass, western needlegrass, needle-and-thread grass, and Great Basin wild rye). When one of these shrublands burns, the woody shrubs are killed, but the deep-rooted grasses may survive, and are able to resprout and come back quickly after fire. Other species that disperse and establish quickly in recently burned areas move in as well. Yellow and rubber rabbitbrush, both woody shrubs with bright yellow flowers, are good examples of species that show up soon after fire. The previously dominant sagebrush and bitterbrush will repopulate the area eventually, but they grow and disperse more slowly. So, after an area burns, the plant community growing there will change over time, with different species exchanging dominance. When small to medium-sized fires burn intermittently across a landscape, as they typically would have a couple hundred years ago, the result is a mosaic of plant communities of different ages, and with different associations of plant species. That sort of variety is good for biodiversity, and good for the resiliency and “health” of the landscape.

Here’s an area that burned in 2003. You can see the bright yellow rabbitbrush, as well as the smaller bunches of perennial grasses. These probably established and grew pretty quickly in this area right after the fire. The green/gray shrubs are sagebrush and bitterbrush, and have come back in this area more slowly.

Here’s a closer look at some of those native perennial bunchgrasses. These guys are champions among the restoration and land management communities out here, because they are great at stabilizing soil and retaining water in burned areas where erosion and water runoff are big concerns.

Unfortunately, that natural process of fire and ecosystem response has changed quite a bit in the last 150 years as this area has become more densely settled and managed by not-so-native American settlers. We don’t seem to like fire very much, and have tried to suppress and put out wildfires ever since we got here. That’s perfectly understandable, as fires are dangerous and destroy most of what gets in their way, but the problem is that suppressing fire has allowed woody plants and plant litter to build up, when it would usually be burning off more regularly. So, when fires burn now, there is more fuel available to them, and they burn hotter, faster, and bigger than they did in the past. That makes them more dangerous for us, and the more severe fires may sometimes be too destructive for the fire-adapted plant communities here, so that burned areas aren’t able to recover as well. Invasive species, especially cheatgrass, are also part of the problem, as they burn easily but also move in quickly to dominate areas that have recently burned.

Here’s another area that burned in 2003. You can see that some shrubs are growing, but it’s also an unfortunate example of how well invasive cheatgrass can take over a site after it burns. Most of the faded, brown, grass covering the ground is cheatgrass. Stupid plant.

So much cheatgrass. I’m sure that most of my fellow CLM Interns can confirm that this stuff is a huge pain to work in. It’s bad for the landscape, and it’s just plain annoying. If you have to walk through this stuff in the Fall, your socks will inevitably become full of the itchy seeds. That’s a problem not just because it’s uncomfortable, but also because you’ll end up carrying this invasive scourge to new places if you’re not diligent about picking them out.

How do deal with and manage wildfires is a complicated issue, and I won’t claim to know what is the right way for us to go about it. But hopefully the data I’ve been collecting about burned areas will become helpful information about how natural areas here are responding to fire.

Until Next Time,

Steve Tillman

Bishop BLM Office

Steve the Pirate, signing off.

Hey Everybody,

Here, at last, is the long overdue farewell blog for my CLM internship in Needles, CA. But don’t worry, this will not be my last CLM blog! I have taken and started a new internship in Bishop, CA along the eastern Sierra’s. In the business and chaos of travel, moving, and getting used to a new place and job, I have neglected to write this blog post. But now I’ve had some time to slow down and think about my time in the Mojave Desert, and it’s about time that I share some of those thoughts.

First of all, the landscape and ecology of the desert is amazing! I don’t think I ever would have sought out the Mojave on my own, but I am very thankful that I ended up there, and have been able to get to know the place. It is thoroughly unique. From my first day in the desert to my last, the landscape never ceased to demand my attention and amazement. The vastness of space in the open desert is incredible. It is interrupted by mountains and valleys, but still one’s gaze can extend for 70 or 80 miles in all directions. And often, that great expanse of space is permeated by stillness and silence. Some days bring the sound of insects and birds, or the frantic scurrying of lizards, but many times a gentle breeze would provide the only visible movement for miles. The place is stunningly beautiful, and sometimes intimidating. On days when I worked alone in isolated places, I was consistently reminded of my own smallness. It was a striking feeling that I won’t forget.

The life that endures and survives in the desert is also amazing. If you spend any time there, you begin to feel just how inhospitable the place can be. The heat of summer is staggering. The dryness is complete and inescapable. When rain finally does come, it often arrives violently with storms and floods that can devastate the land. Living things face challenges everywhere, but the difficulties and threats posed by this hot desert are always in your face. I’m just a weak little human myself, and I was constantly aware that I absolutely could not survive out there on my own. So it is amazing to me that so many plants, animals, and other living things can make it. Their margin for error is tiny, and the desert is a place where they simply cannot survive any mistakes. The adaptations that allow life to make it here are as varied and special as the species that possess them – unique organisms for a nearly impossible home. Learning about and working with the species that survive here has treated me to an incredible display of diversity.

Work with the Needles BLM was wonderful, and desert ecology was fascinating, but I must also say that Needles was a very difficult place to live. The vastness and openness of the desert is beautiful, but the accompanying isolation is a challenge. Needles lies right along the Colorado River and Interstate 40, both a source of life and connection for the people there, but the town is still small, and the isolation is real. Loneliness was often a burden for me. But the difficulties of life in Needles also produced growth and learning that may prove valuable to me for the rest of my life. The desert was a lonely place, but I worked really hard to develop relationships there, and I ended up with a small group of friends that kept me healthy and sane through the year. I could not have made it without them.

So here’s some advice for fellow CLM interns who end up living in isolated and difficult places: Invest in the community and the people there. Put in the effort to find and join the community. You will benefit from it. Some of these isolated, small towns are surprisingly full of life, others can be very sad places. Either way, take the time to learn about the people who live there. Practice empathy. Be positive, appreciative, and encouraging. It will be worth it for you, and the people around you. Look at that, in this blog you get plant stories AND free life advice!

Here’s another bit of short, practical advice for any future CLM interns that are offered the position in Needles. The work and opportunity provided to me by my mentor, Lara, was exceptional. The work of seed collecting and plant monitoring was fascinating. The flexibility I was given to plan my own projects and schedule was exceptional. I was given tremendous encouragement and freedom to make this internship what I wanted it to be, so that it benefited me as much as possible. And the skills, experience, and professional benefit I have gained from this job have been fantastic. I had to be very self-driven and self-reliant to learn well and to do good work here, but I was given great space and opportunity to develop that independence. And they kept me around for a whole year! So if those things are valuable to you, know that this office and this internship will not disappoint.

Here’s one last reflection about the Mojave. I was able to spend a full 12 months working for the BLM in Needles. Sticking with the desert for the cycle of a full year dramatically increased the richness and value of my experience there. I started my internship in May, and if I had only been able to stay through my original 5-month commitment, I would have left in October, and only been able to live through summer and early autumn in Needles. That is no way to see the desert. If you are ever able to spend time in a desert, even if it that means just the occasional visit, understand that the character of the desert changes dramatically with the seasons. Find a way to experience these changes. Summer may be intensely uncomfortable and challenging, but it is awe-inspiring in its brutality. The power of the monsoons in late summer and early fall is startling, and the resulting fall bloom of plants is a treat of color. The coolness and gentle, soaking rains of winter are wonderful, and deeply refreshing. And of course, the bloom of spring flowers in the desert can be magical and spectacular. All of those seasons are different, and all of them are memorable. I’m sure this can be said of most places, but it certainly holds true in the desert. It is a place worth getting to know, worth exploring, and worth seeing throughout the year.

That’s all from Needles! I’ll be back with a blog from the new job in Bishop soon!

Until Next Time,

Steve Tillman

Needles BLM Office

Hello Everyone!

Spring has come, and nearly gone, from my corner of the desert. It’s been a little while since you heard from me, but that is because it has been a very busy spring of work here in Needles. I’ve been helping with sensitive plant monitoring, making native seed collections, and collecting plant tissue for genetic analysis. It has been a wonderful couple months of wildflowers, comfortable temperatures, and active wildlife. But now the spring bloom has passed in all but the northern portion of our field office, and we are regularly reaching triple digits. Sounds like a good time for me to move north…which is something I get to do very soon! In a couple weeks I’ll be moving up to the Bishop BLM Office on the eastern edge of the Sierra’s in California to take another CLM internship. That should be fantastic. But I’m not there yet, and first I get to share with y’all some of the awesome plants that have graced the Mojave lately.

These flowers belong to a species of Phacelia, but I can’t tell you which one. They grew all over the desert this spring, but I must confess that I didn’t try too hard to identify most of them, because they are covered in little hairs that can be irritating to the touch. Would you touch a plant called “scorpion weed”?

Throughout January and February we received occasional winter rain, enjoyed cool daytime temperatures in the 70’s, and saw the small shoots and rosettes of new annual plants starting to come up in our field office. For a while these new species were all a mystery to me, because I’ve never been here for spring before, and just a few leaves isn’t much to go on when trying to ID an unknown plant. But when the annuals finally started to open up, at the end of February and beginning of March, the flurry of botanical activity was exciting and beautiful! In my area we don’t quite get the dense carpeting of wildflowers that coastal California enjoys, but the desert ground is still full of variety and color.

Here’s a fun desert plant. This odd one is Orobanche cooperi (desert broomrape). Did you notice that this plant isn’t green? Well that’s because it is a parasite, and doesn’t perform photosynthesis on its own. Its roots have structures that steal nutrients from the roots of other plants.

Many of the spring flowers belong to small annual plants that sprouted in response to winter rain. The moisture and cooler weather of winter doesn’t last very long though, so the annuals have to move through their life cycle quickly. These plants sprout up leaves, display their showy flowers, then produce and disperse their seeds in just a month or two before they dry up in the heat of the oncoming summer. Springtime is also when many of the perennial shrubs are blooming. In many cases, these widely dispersed shrubs add a hue of color (often yellow) that covers entire landscapes here in the desert. Larrea tridentata (creosote bush) and Encelia farinosa (brittlebush) were especially common and colorful across the desert valleys and washes.

Here’s what I mean about those yellow-flowering desert shrubs. These Encelia farinosa (brittlebush) turned some desert washes into rivers of golden color this spring.

Spring has also been a great time to see wildlife in the Mojave, as the animals have been out and moving around in order to take advantage of the comfortable weather and the abundance of food made available by new plant growth. Accompanying the appearance of showy flowers has been a diverse host of pollinators: bees, wasps, beetles, lots of butterflies, and the always charming hummingbirds. Reptiles have been out in full force as well. In the last month I’ve seen four desert tortoises, hundreds of lizards, and my first two snakes of the year (including the first rattlesnake that has actually rattled at me, after five previous encounters with silent rattlers). And, of course, it is always fun to see mammals. Young ground squirrels, cottontails, and jackrabbits have been scampering around everywhere, and we’ve seen the occasional coyote hoping to make a meal of the slower youngsters. Last week I spotted a group of desert bighorn sheep, including one small lamb. That’s only the second time I’ve been able to see these secretive animals, though I suspect that on many more occasions they have watched me silently and suspiciously from high up on the mountain slopes they call home.

Speaking of wildlife, do you know what this is!? This is a red-spotted toad! I like amphibians a lot, they are great animals. There are toads that can make it out here in the desert, near seasonal springs, by hibernating underground during the dry season (which is pretty much all year). I really wanted to see one of these guys, and this spring I finally did!

And now, I’ll just throw more pictures of cool wildflowers at you:

Recognize this one? There were lots of lupines that bloomed this spring, along roadsides, near washes, and all over the desert. This particular species is Lupinus arizonicus (Arizona lupine).

And here’s a different lupine. I love these plants. They have great flowers.

Alright, here’s a test. Who knows what this plant is? I wrote a whole blog about it a few months ago. I promised pictures of flowers when they showed up…

…and now that they’ve finally showed up, aren’t these flowers fantastic! The answer is, of course, Fouquieria splendens (ocotillo). This is one of the classic plants of the Sonoran Desert to the south.

This one is a pretty little plant. Mimulus bigelovii (Bigelow’s monkeyflower). I think of monkeyflowers as a plant of wet, moist places. But here, they grow in washes that are dry most of the year. Such is the hardiness of desert plants.

One more unique, little, annual flower. This one belongs to Eremalche rotundifolia (desert fivespot).

It doesn’t last long, but the spring here is wonderful. If you are ever near a desert in springtime, you should make the effort to go out and see it. The life that can spring forth from this typically dry and forbidding place is amazing!

But if you’re living in the desert, you better enjoy the spring while it lasts! Because summer is following close behind, and if you’re not careful, you could end up like this.

Thanks for reading! Until next time!

-Steve

Needles Field Office, BLM

You see this face Steve? This is how I feel about that “Tail” pun.

All the other lizard jokes he could have made, and that’s the one he went with? So disappointing.

Spring has come to the Mojave Desert! Annual plants are opening their flowers, birds are active and singing, and we’re leaving behind the cooler days of winter (well, relatively cooler, sorry Chicago). Expect pictures and stories about flowers to come soon, but I’m still trying to figure out what all of these new species are. So with this blog I’m going to talk about critters. Scaly ones.

Lizards are some of the most noticeable and most charismatic Mojave Desert fauna. During the warmer months, I could hardly walk 10 meters through the desert without coming across one of these little reptiles. I seldom picked them out as I approached their hiding spots, but when I got too close they would dart away, scampering wildly across the sand looking for refuge. The fleeing lizards were a welcome source of entertainment and movement on the otherwise oppressively still and hot summer days. Most of the lizards here remained active into October and November last fall, spent the cooler winter underground, and have started to reappear in the last few weeks. Allow me to introduce you to some of them.

A western side-blotched lizard. This guy either thinks that I can’t see him, or he’s trying to decide if he can take me on.

The most common lizard in my part of the Mojave is the western side-blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana elegans). This extremely abundant species is typically the one that I send scattering as I walk through the desert. These lizards are small, only growing up to 4-5 inches long. They can move with great agility and quickness as they run or hop through boulders and shrubs, which helps them to catch their preferred meals of small insects and spiders. One reason I find lizards entertaining is that they seem to have quite a bit of attitude. The males of several species, including side-blotched, can be territorial, and one of the ways they show-off their dominance is by climbing to the top of a boulder, standing up tall on their four legs, and rapidly doing push-ups. Even as I approach, these guys will sometimes stare me down and continue their push-up routine, showing off how tough they are, until finally I get too close for comfort and they run off. That’s pretty bold for a small animal. I think it’s great.

The western zebra-tailed lizard. Take a look at those great big hind feet with the long toes. Those things make this lizard very fast. A whole lot faster than me.

Western zebra-tailed lizards (Callisaurus draconoides rhodostictus) are another common desert species. Like side-blotched lizards, they are fairly small in size, but show a surprising amount of spunk and affinity for showing off their pectoral fitness. In the picture I’ve shared you can see the dark and light striping on the tail that gives this species its name. You may also be able to see just a little bit of bright color on the belly of this lizard. During the breeding season, their undersides are brilliantly blue, yellow, and orange. Zebra-tailed lizards are one of a couple species that could claim to be the fastest in the desert, and they have a habit of running with their striped tails curled up, adding to the list of behaviors that make lizards charming and comical.

Western zebra-tailed lizard. If you look at the edge of its belly, you can see just a little bit of the brilliant colors that this lizard has underneath.

Horned lizards are distinctive and widely recognizable, and the species I’ve come across here is the southern desert horned lizard (Phrynosoma platyrhinos calidiarum). Though not as fast or nimble as some other species, their wider bodies and spiny armor give them protection from many predators. And yes, they can squirt blood from the corners of their eyes as a defense mechanism. They don’t do it very often, but all the same, that is one wild behavior. However, their best defense against predators is their camouflage. The coloration of horned lizards will typically match that of their local habitat, mirroring the soil color in which they live. I have only seen three horned lizards during my time here, but I have surely walked past many more without knowing it. Ants are the preferred food for this species, and they have a sticky tongue that helps them to capture their prey.

This is a southern desert horned lizard. You’re going to get several photos of this species, because I think they are really beautiful.

When I try to take pictures of lizards, they usually make me look very slow and very foolish. But sometimes, if they think they’re hidden, they’ll sit nice and still for me. Like this one.

I think the color and pattern on their scales is gorgeous.

Northern desert iguanas (Dipsosaurus dorsalis dorsalis) are a larger lizard, growing to 16 inches including the tail. This species is also in the running for the title of “Fastest Lizard in the Desert.” Even more impressively, desert iguanas may be able to tolerate higher temperatures than any other North American reptile. They can remain active even during the middle of 120° F summer days. Unlike the other lizards I’ve shown you so far, this species is primarily herbivorous. They eat a particularly large amount of flowers and leaves from creosote bush (Larrea tridentata), the super-abundant shrub that dominates the Mojave Desert.

Northern desert iguana. You know what it’s thinking? “Hey you, with the two legs. Why don’t you come down here and try to catch me? I dare you.”

The long-nosed leopard lizard (Gambelia wislizenii) is another medium-sized species. They sometimes eat plant materials, but leopard lizards also live up to their name as a predator. They lie camouflaged and hidden in the shade of a shrub, and then pounce on their prey with a burst of speed. They eat insects and arachnids, but larger animals like rodents, snakes, and other lizards are also on the menu. Leopard lizards will cannibalize their own species, and will sometimes go after prey nearly as big as they are.

A long-nosed leopard lizard. The spots and its appetite for large prey make this lizard’s name an appropriate one.

I’ve come across a few more lizards, such as big-eyed, nocturnal geckos and the very large, leathery chuckwalla, but I’m afraid that’s all the photos I have to show you. Lizards aren’t always so good about sitting still to have their pictures taken. And there are two species in particular that I haven’t come across yet, but would love to. One is the Mojave fringe-toed lizard (Uma scoparia), a dune-dwelling species of special concern here in California. Hopefully I’ll get to see them as I visit sand dune habitats this spring. The other is the more well-known banded Gila monster (Heloderma suspectum cinctum). With a beautiful, bold, orange and black body, Gila monsters are the largest lizard in the United States, and are one of only a few venomous lizards in the world. They are seen in our field office from time to time, but are not common at all. Of course, I would LOVE to see one, but it’s a long shot. If I do, there will definitely be pictures posted to my blog.

Thanks for reading! Until next time!

-Steve

Needles Field Office, BLM

Hello Everyone,

I confess that it has been awhile since my last post, so you will have to forgive my absence. Part of my excuse is that in December I was able to take a three week break from my CLM position and go back home to northern Illinois for Christmas. I expected that the trip home would give me just a taste of a real winter with snow and ice. Well, it was fairly cold in Illinois, but for those three weeks in December it snowed more here in Needles than it did in Chicago! I did not see a single snowflake up north, and I missed the first snowstorm to hit Needles in more than 50 years! Now that I’m back in Needles I might be tempted to complain that I miss seeing at least a little bit of snow, but then I walk outside and realize that it’s 70 degrees in January, and I feel pretty good about life.

Is that fog? In the desert? Why yes it is. It’s winter here, and it’s been raining.

My CLM internship has been extended again, so that means that I’ll get to stay here in Needles until May, which will give me a full year in the Mojave Desert. That is great for me, and I am especially looking forward to being here for the spring and the possibility of some spectacular spring-blooming plants (but we need to get enough rain this winter – so I’m crossing my fingers). So far in January I’ve spent most of my time here at the office working on research and planning to establish long-term vegetation monitoring plots in our field office in the spring.

Since I haven’t been out in the field much since early December, I don’t have any new pictures or discoveries to share with you. So instead I’ll pull out some old pictures from the fall and we can look at one of the most distinctive desert plants here: ocotillo.

This is Fouquieria splendens (ocotillo). You can see that this one doesn’t have any leaves at the moment, and that is how these plants spend much of their year.

Fouquieria splendens, the ocotillo or coachwhip, is a bizarre plant. It is a woody shrub, with dozens of long, slender stems that branch at the base of the plant and then extend vertically straight up into the air or in a spreading arch. The plants can be up to 20 feet tall, and dominate the landscape in the broad valleys where they grow south of Needles. The stems are grayish-green with fissured bark, and are densely covered with long spines up to 4 cm long. Ocotillos are leafless for much of the year, a behavior that conserves water during dry periods.

Here’s a close up of one of those leafless branches. Those are some very sturdy, serious spines. Good luck climbing this plant.

When I first arrived in May, the large fields of these bare, thorny plants gave a particularly harsh and intimidating face to the desert. But their character changed dramatically after we were hit by the first summer rainstorm. Just three days after it rained, the ocotillos had produced a dense covering of lush green leaves. These plants, which had previously appeared gray and inescapably dry, transformed almost overnight into vibrant green spots of life against the bleak desert landscape. After a couple months and a dry spell the ocotillos dropped their leaves, and have returned to their formidable dry season appearance.

Add a little rain, wait 2 or 3 days, a flick of my magic wand and…Poof! Now we have leaves.

When rain does show up, ocotillo produces a high density of leaves in a hurry. They need to take advantage of their chance to photosynthesize while they have the water resources to do it.

Here’s a little perspective for you. I’m 6’3”. So we’re talking about a pretty substantial plant here. They can grow up to 20 feet tall. And they are especially striking because most of the other plants that grow around them are low-growing species.

I have yet to see the ocotillos blooming, but when the time comes this spring their flowers will add another splash of color to these plants. They produce dense spikes of bright red flowers high up on their stems. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a good look at some in a couple months, and I’ll share pictures with you (but they would also be worth looking up on your own right now). Ocotillo nectar is an especially important food source for hummingbirds as the birds migrate north in the spring. Of the desert flowers that hummingbirds use for food on their migration routes, ocotillos may be the only one that will produce nectar reliably even in very dry years. The birds require this dependable food source to give them the energy to make their long migrations.

I have not yet seen flowers or seeds from ocotillo, but you can still see some of the leftover structures. In the spring, those stalks will be full of brilliantly red flowers.

I haven’t seen very many of these, but here is a little baby ocotillo. Is it cute? Sure. Charming? Absolutely. Huggable? Not so much.

Ocotillos are a Sonoran and Chihuahuan Desert species, so we have them here in the southern part of the Needles Field Office where the Mojave Desert meets the north edge of the Sonoran. Their range extends to the east all the way to Texas. Ocotillo is in the Fouquieriaceae Family, and one of its cousins is the equally bizarre boojum (Fouquieria columnaris) of Baja California, a similar species that can grow more than 60 feet tall. If you’re looking for pictures of strange desert plants (which I recommend), this family is a good place to start.

In fact, I think I’ll leave you with even more plants to go look up. I learned about these from a book put out by the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson (a good place to visit I’m told). There is a plant family called Didiereaceae that appears only in Madagascar. Do a search for “Didiereaceae” pictures. First, you can probably tell that they are totally wild and strange plants. Now compare the ocotillo pictures I’ve posted to some of the Didiereaceae plants, especially the genus Alluaudia (maybe do a separate search for this one). They look pretty similar right? Probably related? Well, it turns out that these two families are not closely related at all. Didiereaceae are somewhat related to cacti, and have succulent leaves that are different from ocotillos. And yet they have evolved with a strikingly similar appearance and growth habit. This is called convergent evolution, a process by which organisms that are not closely related are shaped by similar environmental conditions so that they evolve to have similar traits that have developed independently of one another.

How amazing is that!? Guys, plants are so cool.

Until Next Time,

-Steve

Needles Field Office, BLM

Hello Everyone!

My CLM position here in the Mojave Desert has continued into the late fall, and I’ll be here at least until mid-December. Maybe even longer. Like everywhere else in the country, the days have become shorter and colder here. Unlike most other places, our daytime high temperatures are still in the 70’s and 80’s. I could say that the nighttime temps in the 40’s feel pretty cold to me, but my friends and family back in Illinois probably won’t let me get away with that. But after the oppressive heat of summer, it is delightful to have weather that makes everyone else jealous.

Ericameria paniculata (Mojave rabbitbrush)

Of course, the ecology of the desert is changing with the seasons, and one of the interesting things that I’m seeing is that the plant life here is staying active even as we move into winter. I’m used to plants that have hunkered down into dormancy by this time of year. That is not the case here in the Mojave. There are a few plants that have dropped their leaves during the dry autumn, but most have remained unchanged in anticipation of winter rains. Some species are still holding seeds, and some are even in full bloom right now! I was in a wash this week that was full of the yellow flowers of two shrubs that I am just now seeing in bloom for the first time. I think that is great.

The continuing reproductive activity of the plants means that I have been able to stay busy making seed collections in November. Here are some highlights:

Ericameria paniculata (Mojave rabbitbrush). These plants absolutely glow in the evening sun. It is quite lovely.

Many of the big washes in my field office have turned into rivers of golden yellow this fall, as they have been filled with blooming Ericameria paniculata (Mojave rabbitbrush). This species is a shrub in the Asteraceae family. It grows as a round bush up to about 2 meters tall, and 3 to 4 meters wide. The blooming rabbitbrush has created some absolutely beautiful landscapes in the last month or so, especially in the late afternoons and evenings. This one was an easy collection to make, as the plants contained tens of thousands of their fluffy, wind-dispersed seeds. The plants are pretty sticky and pungent with a strong but sweet smell, so I ended up smelling like Ericameria for the rest of the day, which was fine with me.

Ericameria paniculata (Mojave rabbitbrush). These seeds were just about to fly off to who knows where before I snatched them up.

Another very easy collection that I made a couple weeks ago was of Chilopsis linearis arcuata (desert willow). This species is not a true willow (willows are the genus Salix), but it is a tree with narrow linear leaves that look similar to Salix. Chilopsis linearis is more closely related to Catalpa trees. Desert willows produce long, thin seed pods that are loaded with 50 or more seeds that have dense, white, tufts of hair. When these trees were blooming earlier in the year their white, pink, or purple flowers were very popular with sphinx moths (also called hawk moths). These moths look very much like hummingbirds in the way they hover around flowers. For a week in August, thousands of sphinx moths congregated around the desert willows, so that you could hear the air buzzing with their wing beats. Those were amazing days.

Chilopsis linearis (desert willow). You can see that the leaves do look pretty similar to true willows.

Chilopsis linearis (desert willow). Here are a couple of seed pods that are just about ready to burst open.

Here’s one more for now. Last week I made a collection of Sphaeralcea angustifolia (copper globemallow). This species is a forb that I’ve seen growing to just shy of 1 meter in height. Last week was the first time I have come across this species, but the population I found was pretty impressive. Thousands and thousands of copper globemallow covered the shallow wash I was exploring. That makes for some easy collecting. A few of the plants were still blooming, and showing off their very pretty orange flowers, but most were full of their unusual fruits. If you look at the picture I’ve included, you can see the seed capsules, which some people will describe as little cheese wheels. When they open up, those capsules will drop 10-20 small seeds to the ground. As I finished this collection with the light fading and temperature dropping in the late afternoon, one of my coworkers made an observation. Many of the remaining orange flowers on the Sphaeralcea now contained a bee. The bees weren’t buzzing around collecting nectar, but instead had curled up inside the flowers and were sitting still. My coworker said that they would sleep that way through the night. I had never seen bees do this before, and I thought it was really cool!

Sphaeralcea angustifolia (copper globemallow).

Sphaeralcea angustifolia (copper globemallow). Notice the “cheese wheel” fruits on this plant. Kind of quirky.

All right, that’s enough for now. All you people in colder climates, stay warm!

Ericameria paniculata (Mojave rabbitbrush)

Until next time,

-Steve

Needles Field Office, BLM

Howdy Folks,

The last few weeks in the Mojave have been an exciting and productive time for me. Following the monsoon rains we had in July and August, large populations of annual plants appeared and flowered all over our field office. As we have moved into early fall, many of those populations have been producing and dispersing seeds, which means that there has been plenty of seed collecting for me to do. And that is a good thing.

He’s a little shy

But this blog will not be about seed collecting. The temperature has been dropping for the last few weeks (Hallelujah!), and as it gets cooler the plants have certainly been reacting, but they are not the only ones. The cooler weather has also caused an increase in activity for one of the Mojave Desert’s very charismatic reptiles: Desert Tortoises!

Mojave Desert Tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) are a Federally Threatened species. So they receive much management attention in the Needles Field Office. Earlier this summer, I was able to go out on a tortoise-monitoring trip. We used radio-telemetry to track down and record data from tortoises (more affectionately called “torts”) that had already been tagged with a radio transmitter. Quite the fun trip.

This is a tortoise shell. I think it is rather beautiful.

But that is not quite as satisfying as finding tortoises on your own, so I have been thrilled to find five of them in the last three weeks! After the hot summer, during which the tortoises are fairly inactive, the cooler fall gives them a chance to spend more time searching for food before they head underground to hibernate through the winter. So the time is now for me to find them, and the tortoises have delivered. I’ve seen big adults, an adorable baby, and I even had to rescue a tortoise that was trying to cross a highway. It has been great.

“Hmm, if I walk really fast, could I make it to the other side?”

The Desert Tortoise is one of the most unique desert critters that I’ve seen in my time out here. Their appearance is probably familiar to you: a long neck with a beaked head on the end, thick scaly legs, and a hard, high-domed shell. The torts here in the Mojave can grow up to about 15 pounds and 15-inches long. I have heard stories about the impressive ages that tortoises can reach, perhaps even surpassing a century. 100 seems to be out of reach for the Desert Tortoises here, but they can get very old, living for more than 50 years in the wild, and perhaps approaching 80 in captivity. That may still be long enough to outlive me.

A baby tort. So cute.

Tortoises have earned a fabled reputation as patient and deliberate creatures. That characterization is certainly appropriate. The tortoises I’ve seen have been content to take their time slowly ambling along the desert floor, unhurriedly taking in the shrubs and rocks that surround them. I think it is delightful to watch an animal moving at such a unique pace. I should mention, however, that they can turn the speed up a little bit. We have three tortoises that are kept at our field office, and when you have food the torts often will push the gas pedal all the way down and “run” to you. It is quite the sight.

Until next time,

-Steve

Needles Field Office, BLM

Hello Everyone!

(Hmm, “Everyone” seems kind of optimistic. Maybe I should just say, “Hello Mom & Dad”)

I am back after a long, unintended gap in my blogging about the Mojave Desert. But I have good news. I now have access to all of the pictures I’ve taken for work, which means that I get to show off to you some of the amazing plants that I’ve seen!

Agave utahensis. This one is shooting up a beautiful flower stalk, making it more than 10 feet tall.

To start off, we’ll take a look at a couple of Agaves. This is a rather conspicuous genus that is wildly different from anything I’m familiar with back in my Midwest home. You may recognize a common name used for some Agaves – Century Plants. Most species of Agave are found in semiarid climates farther south in Mexico and the Sonoran Desert, but two species show up in my field area in the Mojave: Agave deserti (Desert Agave) and Agave utahensis (Utah Agave).

Agave deserti. For most of its life, this plant only grows as the rosette of leaves on the ground. But here you can see the bottom of the flower stalk growing up out of this one. When it’s done flowering, this rosette will die.

These plants have a very distinctive form that is striking on the rocky slopes where they grow. They have leaves that grow in a basal rosette – forming a round cluster on the ground. The leaves are succulent, which means that they are thick and fleshy, storing water for the plant in this extremely dry environment where they live. Each individual leaf is long and slender, which sharp teeth on the edges and a dagger-like spine at the tip. The species here in the Mojave have waxy, bluish-green leaves that grow in clusters about 0.5-meter wide.

Agave utahensis. The leaves of these plants contain plenty of water, so they need to protect themselves from being browsed by thirsty animals. Spines like that should do the trick.

Agave utahensis, with some beautiful yellow flowers in bloom. I’m not sure exactly what pollinates this particular species, but some Agaves are pollinated primarily by bats and moths at night. Others rely on hummingbirds for pollination during the day. 

When these Agaves bloom, they produce a tall stalk with a branching inflorescence at the top. The largest flower stalks that I’ve seen have been 3-5 meters in height. That makes for a very tall plant amongst the other, typically shorter, vegetation that grows here in the desert. A hillside full of flowering Agave is an impressive sight. The flowers themselves are beautiful. Both species that grow here produce large, vibrant clusters of yellow flowers.

The label “Century Plant” is misleading, but not entirely inaccurate for these plants. It is true that they will grow as a rosette for many years without flowering. It takes an Agave deserti at least 20-30 years, but not a whole century, before it finally produces flowers. Then, after the plant finally does bloom and produce seed, the rosette withers and dies. However, some Agaves will generate vegetative re-growth as well, forming clones of new rosettes. Over time, these clones can form ring-shaped colonies that far exceed the century mark in age. Some Agave deserti colonies may be more than 1,000 years old! Century Plants indeed.

Agave deserti has red flower buds that open up to reveal yellow flowers. You can see that they bloom first at the bottom of the inflorescence, and move their way up.

First we have the buds…

…and then the flowers

Until next time,

-Steve

Needles Field Office, BLM

Howdy y’all!

I hope you are enjoying your summer, wherever you may be. I certainly am here in Needles. This week in the desert was an especially memorable one, thanks to a visit from an old friend – rain. And a happy reunion it was. After two months in Needles, I’ve seen a grand total of 1.02 inches of rain. And it all came on Tuesday of this last week! So I guess that means we have come to the much-anticipated summer monsoon season!

Now here’s a plant that would be happy to see a little rain.

Now, I’ll try to give you a little bit of science here. But here’s my disclaimer: I’m no meteorologist. So I’ll keep it simple and hopefully correct. The Mojave Desert usually has winds that come from the west and northwest. Those winds carry moisture from the ocean, but as they pass over mountain ranges before they reach the Mojave, they drop most of it. When they get to us, those weather systems have little moisture left, and so this place ends up as a desert because it sits in the mountains’ rain shadow.

In the summer months here, that can change. Temperatures climb, high pressure systems move north, and the lower atmospheric pressure in the Mojave causes winds to come from Mexico to the south, instead of from the over the mountains to the west. Those southerly winds carry moisture from the Pacific Ocean or Gulf of Mexico. The result? Large monsoon thunderstorms that move through the area from time to time and can drop a lot of rain in a hurry.

Rain in the desert! That will make some thirsty plants very happy.

It is so cool to see that rain in the desert when it finally does show up! When the storm came through on Tuesday we saw pouring rain and high winds for several hours. Much of the ground here is very dry and hard, so it doesn’t absorb water well like the Midwestern soil that I’m used to. That means that rain water runs off the soil into sandy desert washes, which can become filled very quickly and violently with flash flood waters during rainstorms.

A double rainbow!

The power and beauty of the thunderstorm was impressive to watch from our house. Streams of water gushed down the street into the river. Lightning filled the sky. A double rainbow made a brief appearance. The road was washed out within half a mile in both directions from our house, so we were stuck at home without power, but no matter. Our porch was as good a place as any to watch the storm. And I ended my night reading Macbeth by candlelight in our dark house, with rain pounding the windows, and thunder shaking the house. That is certainly a pleasant way to spend an evening.

The thunderstorm this week was a most welcome change to our desert weather. Hopefully, there will be a number of plant species that bloom in the coming months in response to rain as well!

Until next time!

-Steve

Needles Field Office, BLM