Thanks to some late season rainfall last year, the fairly localized area along Box Canyon Road through the Mecca Hills is currently exhibiting an unusually diverse though generally quite sparse bloom, nothing that would make anyone gasp, or anyone other than botanists even more than mildly excited, but nevertheless not typical for the month of January. Most of the photographs shown here were taken in an area between the Coachella Canal and Painted Canyon Road. In a year that is shaping up to be a pretty poor one, we wildflower photographers will have to be looking long and hard to find places that have much of a floristic display. An asterisk next to the common name indicates a non-native species, and an upside down V indicates a taxon I had never encountered before. Thanks much to RT Hawke for having located the bloom in this area, which in a good rainfall year is amazing, and thanks to Tommy Stoughton for the identification of the four-wing saltbush.

California sun cup
Eulobus californicus
Onagraceae

Rock daisy
Perityle emoryi
Asteraceae
[Named for William Hemsley Emory, 1811-1887]

Red-stem filaree *
Erodium cicutarium
Geraniaceae

Thomas's buckwheat
Eriogonum thomasii
Polygonaceae
[Named for George Henry Thomas, 1816-1870]

Desert trumpet
Eriogonum inflatum
Polygonaceae

Creosote bush
Larrea tridentata
Zygophyllaceae
[Named for Juan Antonio Hernández Perez de Larrea, 1731-1803]