Desert Chicory
by Stephanie Grant
Title
Desert Chicory
Artist
Stephanie Grant
Medium
Photograph - Digital / Photography
Description
A single bloom and small bud of desert chicory brighten a patch of gravel in Death Valley.
Rafinesquia neomexicana
The Desert Chicory is a weak-stemmed member of the Sunflower Family (Asteraceae) the smooth, gray-green stem grows 6 to 20 inches tall. A small number of leaves around the base are 2 to 8 inches long, the upper leaves being much smaller.
This plant is found in theMojave and Sonoran deserts from southeastern California and southern Texas to the tip of west Texas and south throughout Arizona, New Mexico and into northern Mexico.
It is found growing in gravel and sandy desert flats, often in the shade accompanying shrubs from 200 to 3,000 feet.
The white flower heads, 1 to 1-1/2 inches wide, composed of rays as long as 5/8 of an inch, bloom March through May.
Death Valley is well known for extremes: it is North America's driest and hottest spot (with fewer than two inches/five centimeters of rainfall annually and a record high of 134°F), and has the lowest elevation on the continent—282 feet below sea level.
The valley is a graben, a geological term for a sunken fragment of the earth’s crust .The national park covers an area of about 3.4 million acres and offers many different landscapes, eroded rocks, colorful mudstone hills and canyons, luminous sand dunes, lush oases, and a 200-square-mile salt pan surrounded by mountains. Spring rains can trigger wildflower blooms turning barren wastes to fields of color.
Artifacts and rock art show that the Valley has seen human occupation, for at least parts of the year, for over 9,000 years.
In 1849 emigrants bound for California's gold fields strayed into the 120-mile long basin, enduring a two-month ordeal of "hunger and thirst and an awful silence." One of the last to leave called it Death Valley and the name stuck.
Borax mines were in operation from 1883 to 1889, using the now famous 20 mule wagon teams to haul the mineral. Workers spread the word about the wonders of Death Valley.
As well as over a thousand varieties of plants, Death Valley is home to 51 native species of mammals, 38 reptiles as well as more than 300 species of visiting birds.
Uploaded
March 11th, 2016
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