A Few Beautiful Flowers

Some flowers have been patiently waiting on my desktop until it was their turn to be shared. Now is the time. Enjoy!!

This summer I visited a small canyon in the Santa Rita Mountains a few times to observe the Thick-billed Kingbirds there. The creek bed had been bone dry early in the summer but the first summer rains brought insects for the Kingbirds to feed their young (as seen in an earlier posting). Those same rains also produced a more lush plant base on the ground including this Canyon Morning Glory.

Arizona Poppies were mixed in with the Morning Glory flowers. The creek bed that had been dry and barren when I first visited in June was now, in the middle of August, still dry and yet filled with greenery from the first of the summer rains.

The flowers of mesquite trees are interesting. Each of these yellow masses is called a catkin. Catkins are cylindrical clusters of male flowers. The pollen on these flowers is spread by wind pollination to the female flowers on other trees.

Once pollinated, the female mesquite flowers then create the seed pods. On Velvet Mesquite trees, the pods can have a red color. From a distance, the shape and color of this bunch of seed pods reminded me of a pretzel when I first saw it. I must have been hungry that morning.

Back home on my porch, another of my Desert Roses was flowering. There are so many hybridized varieties of this Adenium and I have no idea what type this particular plant is. All I know is that the flowers are spectacular.

Another look at one of the flowers! The colors are so rich.

A favored quote of mine about flowers is by Ralph Waldo Emerson- “The earth laughs in flowers.”