Bloomin' Spring

It definitely feels like springtime here in the Mono Basin—the days are warming up and the cloudless sky is electric blue; the birds are starting to croon their overtures, preparing for their unabridged performances; the trees are bursting with minute glittering gems of new leaves that dance ecstatically in the breeze; and the blooming Desert Peach is glazing the hillsides pink. When I breathe in, I feel the spring absorbing into my lungs; my skin, my nerves, my blood are rich with it. It is nice to be reminded each spring that regeneration is cyclical, so that we always have something to look forward to even when the winter trees seem lifeless without leaves or if the air is pregnant with silence, lacking birdsong.

Brand new Aspen leaves.

Due to this unusually dry winter and warm spring, the Quaking Aspen groves, Populus tremuloides, in the Basin are already dazzling patches of brilliant green among the more subdued grey-green of sagebrush hillsides. Last year, the winter season extended into the first few weeks of June, and the leaves weren’t out until then in most high groves. Leaf out is a full month earlier this year and it feels a little bizarre. The aspen exploding into green is matched wonderfully with the blooming Desert Peach and Bitterbrush, which add soft blushing pink and mellow buttery yellow to the landscape. Apple trees all over town are bursting with white blossoms as well. It is quite a sight to behold.

Desert Peach with Bitterbrush in the background.

Desert Peach, Prunus andersonii, has smooth shiny silver branches with inch-long woody spines at each cluster of flower buds. The leaves unfurl in April or early May, depending on the year, and the pink flowers follow shortly after. Once bloomed, the two-meter high shrubs are impossible not to notice on the roadsides and hillsides. Their flowers range from deep rosy pink to almost white (and sometimes, though rare, all white). I have found freshly uncurled petals that have a darker magenta pink perimeter that bleed to baby pink. The flower usually has five-petals and has a firework-like cluster of bright yellow stamens bursting out of the center. Desert Peach blooming coincides with the hatching of no-see-ums, miniscule poppy seed-sized biting midges that inflict a nasty welt, so stopping to look at the flowers for too long can be an exciting endeavor filled with lots of swatting. I think it’s worth it. In a few weeks, after the flowers have withered and dropped off, the shrubs will grow small fuzzy dime-sized fruits reminiscent of tiny peaches. Sadly, the pit makes up most of the size and there is only a thin, inedible layer of actual fruit flesh. Apparently the native Pauite boiled just the leaves and twigs to make a tea used to cure rheumatism and common colds (Mozingo 168).

An uncommon six-petaled flower

Perhaps the most widespread shrub in the Basin is Bitterbrush, Purshia tridentata. It fills the sagebrush steppe with stiff dense woody bushes with small three-toothed leaves (hence the latin name tri-, or three, -dentata, or toothed) sprouting from the shreddy older bark. This shrub is another early spring bloomer which has pale yellow-green flowers with robust lemon yellow stamens. In full bloom, the flowers cover the entire bush, hiding the grey-green leaves under a blanket of soft yellow. The plants live long but typically stay between one and two meters high, although three-meter high plants have been found. In the 1950s, an ecologist named Eamor C. Nord found the oldest known individual here in the Mono Basin at Panum Crater during a succession study—is was at least 162 years old (Mozingo 177)! I wonder if it is still alive today.

Buttery Bitterbrush hillside.

Thick with flowers.

The birding is getting quite good as well with spring migration well underway. Hammond’s and Gray Flycatchers are streaming through, and Black-headed Grosbeaks and Bullock’s Orioles are here for the summer. A House Wren is building a nest in a box in the Siberian Elm outside my kitchen window and he sings his bubbly bell-like song from the top of the small aspen by my front porch. I've been running most mornings on a dirt road that winds through the sagebrush above Lee Vining while the sun rises; up until ten days ago, I had heard the zipper-zip-zip calls of Brewer’s Sparrows flying between bushes but it wasn't until the 4th, in the cold blinding sunrise haze that you know signifies it will be a hot day, that I heard them belt out their car alarm ballad in full force. Their trilly, metallic, buzzy song switches octaves and jumps notes repetitively in the most beautiful way. They are a relatively non-descript little brown and tan bird but their simple beauty and complex song makes me respect them in a way I can’t fully articulate. Oh to be a bird who’s song would say it all.

Work Cited

Mozingo, Hugh Nelson. Shrubs of the Great Basin: a natural history. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1987. Print.