The summer rains have brought a welcomed green color to the desert! We have been monitoring several BLM sites in the hopes to find grasses in flower and we have finally had some success! 🙂 Finding flowering grasses also means trying to identify species! We are beginning to get a lot of practice using ligule keys! I wish I would have paid more attention during those grass labs in taxonomy! With in the next few weeks we are planning on making some of our first collections for the summer! In May and June all we saw was last years growth. The rains in early July caused some new growth to start and now in early August we are seeing flowers. I’m super excited to finally see the whole cycle of life in the desert.
With the grasses we have also found a variety of beautiful forbs! The diversity of species is simply amazing in the desert!
Aristolochia watsonii (Dutchmens pipe)
Proboscidea althaeifolia
