Saguaro Land: The desert in bloom

Saguaro Land is a series from The Show looking at the Sonoran Desert — the lushest, hottest desert in the world that happens to be our home.

The stories will examine the desert season by season, through music, art, literature, food, drink, flora and fauna — and maps, starting with a look at where exactly the Sonoran Desert is.

The deseret is blooming at the Pima Dynamite Trailhead near Carefree.

Melanie Tluczek is the director of science and education for the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy.

It’s the very beginning of wildflower season here — and this year’s is expected to be a big one.

It’s been a bit of an odd year for wildflowers in the Sonoran Desert. From an onslaught of unexpected rain, to late-season freezes, to a few, brief spikes into the 80s. The Show hit the trail with Tluczek to talk about desert wildflowers.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Here we are examining the desert season by season through music, art, literature, food, drink, flora and fauna, and exploring the way this place touches every aspect of life in this corner of the world. And today, it's blooming.

MELANIE TLUCZEK: So we are at the Pima Dynamite Trailhead of Scottsdale-McDowell-Sonoran Preserve.

GILGER: Melanie Lucek is the Director of Science and Education for the McDowell-Sonoran Conservancy.

TLUCZEK: We are going to be going down the Axelgrease Trail, which looks extremely promising for wildflowers because we have a lot of good vegetation cover there.

GILGER: Let's hit the trail. It's the very beginning of wildflower season here, and this year's is expected to be a big one.

TLUCZEK: If it's not a super bloom, it's going to be very, very close. We've gotten a lot of rain. We've gotten the rain at really good times, nice soft rains during the winter. moving on into the spring and exactly what the wildflowers need to come out in force.

GILGER: And it doesn't take long for us to spot our first blooms.

TLUCZEK: These are one of our very first wildflowers of any season. They're called fiddleneck.

GILGER: That's a great name.

TLUCZEK: Yeah, and they're named because the flowers actually bloom on a little inflorescence, that's sort of the stalk on which the flowers bloom, that is curled like the neck of a fiddle. They also call that a scorpioid inflorescence, because it's kind of like a scorpion tail as well.

GILGER: It does. It curls right like that. That's really beautiful. So these are the first you usually see.

TLUCZEK: Yes, almost always. They're the first ones out of the ground. They're the first ones to start blooming. They're our workhorse species.

GILGER: Even this early in the season, before the poppies come out and before yellow brittle brush, blankets, mountainsides, the signs of the coming bloom are everywhere.

TLUCZEK: This is, I'm going to confirm, I'm looking for the seed heads to tell me exactly what this is. This is bladder pod.

GILGER: Another great name.

TLUCZEK: Yeah, you know, plants have really fun names. A lot of them do. This one is in the mustard family. There's a lot of early spring blooming plants that are in the mustard family. And if you're wondering if they actually taste like mustard, it depends on the plant.

GILGER: It's been a bit of an odd year for wildflowers in the Sonoran Desert. From an onslaught of unexpected rain to late season freezes to a few brief spikes into the 80s, the patterns are different this year.

TLUCZEK: There was a lot of worry, I think, among our stewards, our volunteers, that the freezes were going to kill off the little seedlings as they were coming up. But, you know, the desert finds a way and that hasn't happened. It.

GILGER: Does seem to find a way. We stopped here. You spotted something, I think?

TLUCZEK: A couple more bladder pod, and it's right up against a shrub that is also blooming. You're kind of getting the hidden desert tour of this because these are, yeah, these are not the flowers that you, know, jump out at you, but this is another really important species in the desert. This is called ambrosia or triangle leaf burst sage. And you can see the flowers. They haven't opened yet, but they're starting. If you look all around, the shrub is everywhere. It's sort of the mainstay of the Sonoran Desert. Of course, it's really important for pollinators and other wildlife, and it provides shade and kind of a nurse plant situation for a lot of other plants. You can see right here, there's a buckhorn cholla growing right up in the middle of it.

GILGER: Literally out of the middle of this shrub, there's a big cholla. So it grows because the ambrosia's here?

TLUCZEK: Yes, that's correct. Yeah, as a small seedling, you can imagine how vulnerable a little tiny cactus would be to small critters that like to chew on it for its moisture. And so to grow in a shrub like this not only gives it a little protection, but also a little extra shade and a little extra water.

GILGER: That makes a lot of sense. All right, let's keep it going, So I have to ask you, because you have such a detailed knowledge of what we're looking at here, how did you get into this?

TLUCZEK: Yeah, so my background is wildlife ecology. I love nature. I love learning everything about it. And I was lucky enough to land in an organization where I get to lead the science and the outdoor education.

GILGER: So you spot something else here?

TLUCZEK: I did.

GILGER: Oh, look at this.

TLUCZEK: So this is a Christmas cholla, and we're not looking at the flowers, but we are looking at the fruits of it. So this is a very like pencil thin cactus with... large yellow or orange spines and little, probably like half inch long red fruits all over it. And they call it the Christmas cactus because it, kind of looks like Christmas lights.

GILGER: It does, it does. They look like little red bulbs on it.

TLUCZEK: Yeah, and they're really, this is really important for wildlife. As you can imagine, a lot of things like to eat those juicy little red fruits. including humans.

GILGER: They're edible.

TLUCZEK: Yes, they are. But I would always caution people to know exactly what they're looking at before they try anything.

GILGER: So that's really interesting. So you said, okay, wildlife ecology is what you studied and what you focus on here. And obviously you have a lot of knowledge about the Sonoran Desert itself. So how do wildflowers and sort of the blooming season that we're in here, how does that play into it? Like when you have a super bloom, when you have a lot of things blooming because of a lot of water and because of a lot of rain, What does that mean for everything else? The ecological system here, the plants, the insects, right?

TLUCZEK: Yeah, so the plants, like we think of them as kind of the bottom of the food chain or the foundation of the food chain. The more plants there are, the more herbivores, the more pollinators, and the more omnivores that are going to eat, you know, the other plants and the other animals. And then that goes all the way up the trophic system to our top carnivores. So when you have a super bloom, it really kicks off, it kind of kick starts the whole ecosystem. You have more insects for the birds to eat. You have more rabbits and more quail, you know, for coyotes to eat and bobcats. You have a lot more forage for deer. And especially as things are growing, you know, plants that are growing quickly, they're putting their proteins into kind of those growth functions. And so that provides a lot of nutrition for animals like deer. And when you have more a healthy deer population, you have a healthy mountain lion population and the whole cycle.

GILGER: The cycle of life as it is.

TLUCZEK: Exactly. One thing that's interesting is when we talk about wildflowers, which are often, we think of these little tiny plants kind of close to the ground, these kind of succulent little plants. And for a long time, people thought that the quail population had to do with the amount of water out there. If you had a lot of water, you'd have a really good quail year, but it's actually the vitamin A in the wildflower plants that controls how well your quail population establishes that year.

GILGER: That is so fascinating and like so detailed, right? It's this one vitamin that has this big effect on quail, which are so ubiquitous here.

TLUCZEK: Yep, absolutely. That controls the reproduction. And then if you can imagine all the things that eat quail are going to be doing really well too. Oh, I do want to stop and just have you take a deep breath. Right about here. No, I got a little bit of horse. What I'm going for is, do you smell any kind of a sweet smell?

GILGER: Yes, absolutely. What is that?

TLUCZEK: Is the mistletoe in those trees?

GILGER: Are those Palo Verdes?

TLUCZEK: Those are Palo Verdes, and those masses in the Palo Verdes are native mistletoe. And that is in bloom. And when it blooms, it releases the most incredible, like honey sweet scent.

GILGER: I've never known what those are. They look like sort of a bunch of weeds hanging in a tree up there. There's another big bunch right there. Wow. So it's mistletoe? Desert mistletoe.

TLUCZEK: Desert mistletoe. And a lot of people think that it's invasive or that it's hurting the trees. In actuality, it's playing a very important role in the ecosystem. When a tree is very old and declining, it will attach itself to it. And it does draw some nutrients, but it doesn't kill it per se. But what it does do is feed the bird populations.

GILGER: So I want to ask you as we keep going about what you love about the Sonoran Desert itself, right? Like it's a unique desert. It's the most biodiverse desert in the world, correct?

TLUCZEK: Like that's correct.

GILGER: What do you love about it?

TLUCZEK: Oh gosh, where do I start? I moved here 20 years ago from Minnesota and I had no idea just how diverse and how unique each and every one of the life forms were that I would find here. we tend to think of cacti as just kind of like, well, it's a cactus, right?

No, it's so much more than that. And the closer you look, I think this is the thing I love the most about the Sonoran Desert. is the closer you look, the more you see. Something that can appear kind of small, insignificant, or just kind of a lot of brown on the outside. You get closer and closer and you see just this infinite diversity of plants and animals and these really just ingenious adaptations.

GILGER: It's all built to survive.

TLUCZEK: Exactly.

GILGER: Melanie Lucic, thank you so much for showing me around this morning. It's been so beautiful.

TLUCZEK: Thank you.