There are other tree forms, like the palo verde and the mesquite, that are not wanting in a native grace; and yet it may as well be admitted that most of the trees and bushes are lacking in height, mass, and majesty. It is no place for large growths that reach up to the sun. The heat and drouth are too great and tend to make form angular and grotesque. But these very conditions that dwarf form perhaps enhance color by distorting it in an analogous manner. When plants are starved for water and grow in thin poor soil they often put on colors that are abnormal, even unhealthy. Because of starvation perhaps the little green of the desert is a sallow green; and for the same reason the lobes of the prickly pear are pale-green, dull yellow, sad pink or livid mauve. The prickly pear seems to take all colors dependent upon the poverty, or the mineral character, of the ground where it grows. In that respect perhaps it is influenced in the same way as the parti-colored hydrangea of the eastern dooryard.
Blossoms and flowers.
Many varieties.
All the cacti are brilliant in the flowers they bear. The top of the bisnaga in summer is at first a mass of yellow, then bright orange, finally dark red. The sahuaro bears a purple flower, and the cholla, the ocatilla, the pitahaya come along with pink or gold or red or blue flowers. And again all the bushes and trees in summer put forth showers of color—graceful masses of petaled cups that look more like flowers grown in a meadow than blossoms grown on a tree. In June the palo verde is a great ball of yellow-gold, but there is a variety of it with a blue-green bark that grows a blossom almost like an eastern violet. And down in Sonora one is dazzled by the splendor of the guyacan (or guallacan) which throws out blossoms half-blue and half-red. All the commoner growths like the sage, the mesquite, the palo fierro, and the palo blanco, are blossom bearers. In fact everything that grows at all in the desert puts forth in season some bright little flag of color. In the mass they make little show, but examined in the part they are interesting because of their nurture, their isolation, and their peculiarity of form and color. The conditions of life have perhaps contorted them, have paled or grayed or flushed or made morbid their coloring; but they are all of them beautiful. Beautiful color is usually unhealthy color as we have already suggested.
Wild flowers.
Salt-bush.
Aside from the blossoms upon bush and tree there are few bright petals shining in the desert. It is no place for flowers. They are too delicate and are usually wanting in tap root and armor. If they spring up they are soon cut down by drouth or destroyed by animals. Many tales are told of the flowers that grow on the waste after the rains, but I have not seen them though I have seen the rains. There are no lupins, phacelias, pentstemons, poppies, or yellow violets. Occasionally one sees the wild verbena or patches of the evening primrose, or up in the swales the little baby blue-eye growing all alone, or perhaps the yellow mimulus; but all told they do not make up a very strong contingent. The salt bush that looks the color of Scotch heather, out-bulks them all; and yet is not conspicuously apparent. Higher up in the hills and along the mesas one often meets with many strange flowers, some fiery red and some with spines like the Canadian thistle; but not down in the hot valleys of the desert.
The grasses.
The lichens.
Nor are there many grasses of consequence aside from a small curled grass and the heavy sacaton that grow in bunches upon isolated portions of the desert. By “isolated” I mean that for some unknown reason there are tracts on the desert seemingly sacred to certain plants, some to cholla, some to yuccas, some to grease wood, some to sahuaros, some to sacaton grass. It seems to be a desert oddity that the vegetation does not mix or mingle to any great extent. There are seldom more than four or five kinds of growth to be found in one tract. It is even noticeable in the lichens. One mountain range will have all gray lichens on its northern walls, another range will have all orange lichens, and still another will be mottled by patches of coal-black lichens.