Mountain Harebell

Summer wildflowers abound in Colorado. Some of the flowers are the same as we see in southern Arizona, but ours burn out by the beginning of May, since we are so much hotter, while the ones in Colorado are at their best in summer and into the fall. This is a Campanula routundiforia (Mountain Harebell). It grows […]

Sunset Beauty Moment

White Prickly Poppy (Argemone mexicana) or “Cowboy’s Egg” at sunset in Gardner Canyon in the Santa Rita Mountains of southern Arizona. 1/125 second at f 7.1 – ISO 3200 with diffused fill-flash All parts of this year-round bloomer, known by the Aztecs as “nourishment for the dead”  have psychoactive properties. Shamans used it for journeys to […]

Cone Flowers in the Morning

These Yerba Mansa (Anemopsis californica) are a wildflower in the Lizard-Tail family which bloom from May through August in moist alkaline soils of  northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. According to Spellenberg’s Sonoran Desert Wildflowers,  the indigenous people use the flower for medicinal purposes: as a tea for stomach ailments, as a salve for skin problems, in a poultice for […]

Woolly Daisy

The yellow woolly daisy (Eriophyllum wallecei) is a diminutive plant in the sunflower family with half-inch wide heads that bloom from March through June in the desert washes and open sandy soil of the southwest United States and northern Mexico. I photographed these after sunset with a macro lens, a dragged shutter (to show ambient light in the sky), […]