I apologize for the length of this post. It actually went much longer, but I already trimmed quite a bit off.

The ocotillo is blooming now, as it reliably does every year at this time, whether wet or dry. This predictability allows hummingbirds to follow the progressive bloom that feeds them on their annual migrations north from southern Mexico.

This is the first post of a series that I am working on: a scanned field guide to plants along the Tumamoc Road. The project started with a botanical sketching session up here in early spring. We were trying to identify flowers as we drew them, and were having? hard time finding the right field guide. So we’ll create our own.