I went down to the Fonts Point Wash area of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park to join a group from the Orange County CNPS and some other interested botany people in search of Thurber's stemsucker, a tiny parasitic plant belonging to a genus (Pilostyles) with a very weird geographic distribution (there is one other species in Iran and a second in Australia), and about which little is known for sure. It grows on the felty stems of the Emory indigo bush or dyeweed (Psorothamnus emoryi). We were disappointed not to be able to locate individual plants in bloom although most of the plants observed were infested with the Pilostyles (pi-LOS-til-ees). However, as is often the case with this plant, once I got home and enlarged some of my pictures, I discovered flowers that had probably been in recent bloom. I may have to wait until this Dec/Jan. to get fresher flowers. After leaving the Fonts Point Wash and Inspiration Point Wash areas, I drove down to Ocotillo Wells, which is a part of Anza-Borrego I'd never been to, to check out the Elephant Trees area, a rocky and sandy alluvial plain coming off of the Vallecito Mts. There had been good rains in this part of the desert in September, and Tom Chester recorded well over 1,000 plants of 39 species in bloom in December, but there is not much blooming there right now, so we must be in a lull between blooming periods, and things will probably pick up again when we get some extended warm weather to really get things going.

Little gold poppy
Eschscholzia minutiflora
Papaveraceae
[Named for Johann Friedrich Gustav von Eschscholtz, 1793-1831]

Galls on Emory indigo bush
Psorothamnus emoryi
Fabaceae
[Named for William Hemsley Emory, 1811-1887]

Spanish needles
Palafoxia arida var. arida
Asteraceae
[Named for José Rebolledo de Palafox y Melzi, 1776-1847]

Desert sand verbena
Abronia villosa var. villosa
Nyctaginaceae

California croton (Male flowers)
Croton californicus
Euphorbiaceae

Pale sun-cup
Camissonia pallida ssp. pallida
Onagraceae
[Named for Ludolf Karl Adelbert von Chamisso, 1781-1838]

Windmills, Trailing 4 o'clock
Allionia incarnata var. incarnata
Nyctaginaceae
[Named for Carlo Ludovico Allioni, 1728-1804]

Common phacelia
Phacelia distans
Boraginaceae

Catclaw acacia
Senegalia greggii
Fabaceae
[Named for Josiah Gregg, 1806-1850]