Ocotillo Y (why not?)

On September 29th at Lost Dutchman State Park outside Phoenix I photographed this ocotillo, Fouquieria splendens. Recent heavy rains had caused these spindly plants of the Sonoran Desert to put out a dense covering of leaves to do some photosynthesis while the photosynthesizing was good, which is to say before the usual drought of the desert set back in and the plants would shed their briefly used leaves as quickly as they’d put them on.

If you’d like a reminder of what the bright red flowers of ocotillo look like, you can check out a post from west Texas this past spring. Notice how the ocotillo in that earlier photograph didn’t have a single leaf on its dry branches, but that didn’t stop it from putting out flowers.

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This is another entry from the saw (as in the past tense of see) part of the see-saw that’s been bouncing back and forth between pictures from my trip to the American Southwest in late September and more-recent pictures showing what’s been going on in Austin.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman