Bloom Reports from the Anza-Borrego Desert: 2024-2025
Table of Contents
Latest Summary of Bloom Status
Bloom Reports from Individual Hikes This Season
Links to Other Webpages on Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Blooms
Background Information for Bloom Reports from the Anza-Borrego Desert
Older Bloom Reports from 2009 to present
Fig. 1. Coyote Creek just above Second Crossing, photo taken on 8 March 2025 by Tom Chester. Encelia farinosa, brittlebush, is blooming well in the vicinity of the creek, but plants of that same species are still nearly dead-looking farther from the creek, such as the plant at lower left. The very happy green plants along the creek unfortunately are sour clover, Melilotus indicus.
Click on the pix for a larger version.
Latest Summary of Bloom Status
Summary as of 12 March 2025
This is normally the time of peak bloom on the desert floor, but to a first approximation, there are no blooms at all on the desert floor. Annuals are essentially non-existent; there is not a single live plant of sand verbena, Abronia villosa, or dune evening primrose, Oenothera deltoides, blooming or not, that we know of. The desert floor received too little rain to germinate annuals. It is a bleak picture in most places on the desert floor, with most plants still appearing in their summer dormant phase.
The exceptions are:
- Ocotillo, Fouquieria splendens, is having a decent fairly widespread bloom. Their torch-like red flowers are a strong contrast to the dead-looking vegetation surrounding them. Somehow, they've managed to store enough water and energy to produce their blooms.
- Areas with flowing water that came from higher elevations. These include:
- Coyote Creek at Second Crossing and above, with 29 native species found in bloom on 8 March 2025. This requires driving the well-graded Coyote Canyon dirt Road for about four miles to get to Second Crossing.
- Carrizo West Fork Palms Second - Jacumba Jim Canyon, with 18 native species found in bloom on 10 March 2025. This requires driving about five miles on a sandy wash road.
- Washes with deep sand that received and stored good monsoonal rain on 10 August 2024. These include:
- Diablo Canyon and Fish Creek Wash, with 20 native species found in bloom on 21 February 2025. It requires 40 minutes of driving on a wash road to get there.
- Rainbow Canyon Wash, with 13 native species found in bloom on 3 and 8 February 2025. This Wash is easily accessed from the paved road S2.
If you aren't in one of those favored areas, you are likely to see only four to thirteen blooming species on a typical hike. In Fred and Carla's desert hikes of ~four to ~six miles in the last month, they have seen 8, 4, 4, 11, 6, 27, 15, 7, 6, 7, 10, 17, 4, 28, and 13 species in bloom.
For the Borrego Desert as a whole, since 12 February 2025, there have been 442 iNat posts of 75 species in bloom. The numbers may be higher if you click on that link after 12 March. The most commonly posted species in bloom are ocotillo, Fouquieria splendens, with 75 observations; brittle bush, Encelia farinosa, with 36 observations; chuparosa, Justicia californica, with 27 observations; and creosote, Larrea tridentata, with 24 observations. If you have some species you are interested in seeing in bloom, you can use the link above and then enter your species in the search box at top.
You can explore the state of the bloom yourself from the comfort of home with the iNat 4,046 observations of 282 species, mostly non-blooming, posted at iNat since 12 February 2025 (numbers are as of 12 March 2025; your numbers will be greater as more obs are added from later dates). Click on "Filters" in the upper right to change the date range if you want to see only very recent observations.
Click on the "Map" tab at the link and you can zoom into the map to see where the reports are. Once you zoom into a given area, click on the "Redo search in map", or use the rectangular or circular area tool to circumscribe your area, to find out how many flower observations there are in your desired area. Each observation gives the date and time of observation, and the latitude and longitude for each observation, which is plotted on a map so you can see where it was observed (rare species have obscured coordinates, which have a different symbol on the map and wildly-inaccurate coordinates from the obscuration).
See also previous versions of this page. In particular, the 14 February 2025 page gives more detailed information about the current drought, as well as the record summer heat our plants experienced last year.
Bloom Reports from Individual Hikes This Season
The latest bloom reports are given first (i.e., the reports are in inverse order of time). As detailed immediately above, you can see a map of where the hikes were from any linked iNat post of the species in bloom.
For many more bloom reports, see Anza-Borrego Wildflowers Bloom Report by Fred Melgert and Carla Hoegen.
Bloom Reports not yet added to this page
Links to Other Webpages on Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Blooms
Anza-Borrego Wildflowers Bloom Report by Fred Melgert and Carla Hoegen, often with daily wildflower updates.
All iNaturalist observations in the Borrego Desert since 1 December 2024, 774 observations of 198 species (numbers are as of 20 October 2024 (click on "Filters" to change the dates).
Wildflower Updates from the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association.
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park official site, with wildflower information on it. When they start producing current wildflower reports, click on the link near the top with the word Update, which might be updated weekly.
DesertUSA Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Wildflower Reports
Anza-Borrego Foundation and Institute Wildflowers and their Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Wildflower Hotline: (760)767-4684. "Information on this recording is updated regularly."
Theodore Payne Wildflower Hotline (Reports begin the first Friday in March)