Wednesday

Poppies in New Mexico

With over 3" of rain recorded for the first quarter of 2015 the wild flowers in the high desert have come into bloom.  The poppies are always a favorite but so far this year they have been confined to swaths of the San Simon river bed.  One interesting observation is that this year the large swaths of poppies are confined to the east side of the riverbed paralleling the route of the "old road".  Whether this localization represents crop marks defining the route of the old road or just a fortuitous happenstance is unknown but the yellow, orange, and white poppies are certainly spectacular this year.

Looking west across the poppies in the San Simon riverbed

South along the route of the "old road" covered in poppies





Yellow, orange, and white poppies




Poppies, up close and personal
Finally, this image was made several years ago when there was another wet spring with poppies and is a favorite.

A double gradient of poppies.



4 comments:

  1. We have some poppies along our road. We had a beautiful display in the Paramore Crater. I bet that hike is never as lovely! all that rain came at the right time to germinate and nourish all those plants. We have wildflowers here I've never seen till now.

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  2. It sounds like you reached Paramore Crater at just the right time to catch the display. This is good news if the blooming poppies continue to move north as they did several years ago. Perhaps I was to early in getting poppy photographs and will have to go out again.

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  3. One of the hikers predicted flowers even more beautiful when we hiked there [I was fretting the flowers would be gone a week earlier] and she was correct [has lived here >50 years and knows] I hope you DO find more to photograph!

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  4. I hope the poppies bloom on the benches above the riverbed again. It is a spectacular sight.

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