Anza-Borrego 2019 super bloom

By Kathleen Wong, UC Natural Reserve System

The palette of the Colorado Desert is often subdued—its dun soils, beige sands, and gray rocks are typically enlivened by only a few green creosote bushes or spiny cacti. But this year is an exception. The skies delivered six times more water to San Anza-Borrego State Park during the 2018-19 rainy season than the previous year. The watery bonanza kicked off southern California’s second super bloom in two years, a surprise given that these events occur once a decade on average.

These photographs document the super bloom at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and the Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center, an NRS reserve located at the western edge of Borrego Springs. Photos were taken March 14–16, while the bloom was in full swing.

At the edges of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

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Wildflowers carpeted the desert floor all the way to the hills at the end of DiGiorgio Road. Image credit: Kathleen Wong
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Desert sand verbena, desert marigold, and chicory carpeted fields at the end of DiGiorgio Road. Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu
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Desert marigold and purple sand verbena by DiGiorgio Road. Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu
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Purple phacelia and California evening primrose (white) covered the dunes near Ocotillo Wells. Image credit: Kathleen Wong
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Swarms of painted lady butterflies sipped nectar from the cornucopia of flowers. Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu
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Desert lilies (Hesperocallis undulata) flowered as early as December, hinting at a possible super bloom to come.

Palm Canyon Trail, Anza-Borrego State Park

Palm Canyon Trail follows a spring issuing from the hills near the park visitor center to a California fan palm oasis. Flowers flourished beneath boulder crevices, bejeweled washes, and tinted entire canyon slopes.

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Early morning along Anza-Borrego’s Palm Canyon trail. Image credit: Kathleen Wong
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The California fan palm (Washingtonia filifera) oasis at the end of the Palm Canyon trail in the park boasted a phenomenal array of wildflowers, including yellow brittlebush, purple phacelia, and red chuparosa. Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu
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Parish’s poppy and Bigelow’s monkeyflower
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Bigelow’s monkeyflower (pink), Parish’s poppy (yellow), pincushion spp.(white), phacelia (purple) along the Palm Canyon trail. Image credit: Kathleen Wong
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Tiny Bigelow’s monkeyflower (Diplacus bigelovii) plants glowed like rubies in many sandy washes. Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu
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Closeup of Bigelow’s monkeyflower (Diplacus bigelovii). Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu
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Phacelia. Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu
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Desert chicory (white) and phacelia (purple). Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu
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The spring at Palm Canyon issues from the heart of a boulder-lined valley. Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu
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The view of Borrego Springs from the Palm Canyon trail. Image credit: Kathleen Wong

Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center

Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center is located on the site of a former country club at the outskirts of the town of Borrego Springs. In 2011, the building and its adjacent open desert joined UC Natural Reserve System. UC Irvine, which administers the reserve, renovated the club into a field station complete with meeting rooms for classes and lectures, accommodations, and a laboratory. The reserve now hosts nearly a thousand university students, members of the public, and researchers per year. A partnership with Anza-Borrego Desert State Park facilitates research within the 615,000 acres of desert, badlands, mountains and springs of California’s largest state park.

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The Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center offers housing for visitors, a laboratory, classroom, and meeting space. Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu
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The desert around the field station was alive with purple phacelia, cholla, barrel cactus, ocotillo, and other desert plants. Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu
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Desert calico (Loeseliastrum matthewsii). Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu
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Interior of a barrel cactus (Ferocactus cylindraceus) flower. Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu
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Sarah Kimball, Assistant Director of the Center for Environmental Biology at UC Irvine, and UCI field technician Julie Coffey inventory the plant species at Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center.
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Botanists from UC Irvine and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park were painstakingly inventorying the plant species growing on reserve lands. Their tools included a plant press, tape for measuring transects, and all-important species identification references. Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu
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Reserve research associate Sicco Rood measures subsurface soil moisture to characterize current plant growing conditions. Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu
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Arizona lupine grows in profusion on the slope behind the field station. Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu
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The NRS’s Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center is surrounded by more than 75 acres of wild desert at the western edge of Borrego Springs. Image credit: Lobsang Wangdu

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