Anza-Borrego North: Plant Life

Photo of the yellow flower of a Cotton-Top Cactus, Echinocactus polycephalus
Rarely Seen Yellow Flower of the Cotton-Top Cactus, Echinocactus polycephalus

People who come to Anza-Borrego to see the wildflowers bloom in spring know Anza-Borrego north.

To wildflower fanatics, it means walking in canyons west of Borrego Springs such as Borrego Palm Canyon. It means driving along Henderson Canyon Road from Henderson Canyon to the Pegleg Monument looking for such plants as purple Sand Verbena, white Dune Evening Primrose, and yellow Desert-Sunflower.

Looking for wildflowers in bloom can also mean driving up the Coyote Canyon Jeep Trail to Desert Gardens, parking by an Ocotillo plant or an Indigo bush, and, carrying a wildflower guide, walking into some of the little canyons at the base of the Coyote Mountain ridge.

To the east, along County Road S-22 and in Palm Wash below the Calcite Mine, it's often possible to find Orcutt's Woody Aster (surprisingly, an Asteraceae) which is common in this area but rare elsewhere.

After the spring wildflowers fade away, other flowers start to appear. The pea family (Fabaceae) which brings us purple Arizona Lupine, blue Indigo Bush, and yellow catclaw and mesquite flowers in spring produces White Dalea (a host for Thurber's Pilostyles, the smallest plant in the desert) and the bright yellow flowers of the Palo Verde tree.

North of County Road S-22, from Mile Marker 32 northeast to Palo Verde Wash, is a good place to look in late spring to mid summer for the rarely seen flowers of the Diamond Cactus and the Cotton-top Cactus.

Mark Jorgenson of the state park staff is credited with a couple of finds in the Santa Rosa Mountains. One was a group of Elephant Trees. The other was a Prickly-Pear Cactus (Opuntia polyacantha var. erinacea) in the pinyon-juniper woodland on the ridge between Villager Peak and Rabbit Peak.