The Great Flower Chase: Petal to the Metal

EVEN IN THE DESERT, people weary of winter. Eyes probe the landscape's languid browns and grays for an omen of green, the subtle swelling of a bud that ignites life's fuse and explodes into the Great Flower Chase. Word of a bumper crop of spring wild-flowers wafted my way early in January 2005 from a friend at Death Valley, followed by a postcard and e-mail messages. I held my breath hoping for a glorious Sonoran bloom, anxious to not seem overanxious, but dreading disappointment. Then rapid-fire reports from Alamo Lake, Lost Dutchman and Picacho Peak state parks raised expectations. The Great Flower Chase rides waves of color-first the gaudy wildflowers, then full-blossomed trees, then vivid cacti, and finally raging summer flowers. We yearn to surf them all.

The phone rang with a call from an East Coast friend who works for National Geographic. He's a savvy world traveler who loves to fly a little motorized paraglider over places where the rest of us would die of fright. Born in Beverly Hills and looking like a lanky surfer, George Steinmetz is at home hitchhiking across Africa or camping on a deserted island. Now he was dead seri-ous about shooting flowers, so he fretted about the light, the dust, the wind and the competition. He wanted to know when he could catch the show.

Peak blooms seldom last more than two weeks in any area, so flower chasers keep the camper gassed-up. In early February to mid-March 2005, a banner year, one could go nearly anywhere below 1,500 feet from north-ern Baja California to Death Valley, Palm Springs to Phoenix, and be overwhelmed with stunning displays. But as days warm, the palette can fade in a snap. So I called Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum ecologist Mark Dimmitt, who pilots a wild-flower hotline and monitors a network of keen observers. His reply was succinct: "Tell him to drop everything and come NOW!" George rushed to Arizona.

Why this mania to chase flowers? After all, how fast can a flowering plant run? (Or do they pedal?) To hear Mark tell it, "My first springtime trip to the desert without my parents was in 1964 when I was a sophomore in high school. I found huge fields of wildflowers that

Drive-by wildflower hunting

Of the 200-odd species of showy spring flowers, here are 8 that tourists can quickly learn to identify at 60 mph from an Arizona highway.

Utterly astounded me because they were so unexpected, and the carpets went on for many miles, more colorful and astoundingly more extensive than I ever imagined. I took pictures with my Brownie camera and assumed that the desert put on this spectacle every spring, and I resolved to see more of them. All through college and most of graduate school I never saw another carpet of flowers. I forgot about the photos and came to regard my memory of the glorious bloom as just a dream.

"Then in 1973 another banner year happened. My memories of the sophomore spectacle returned, plus the memories of all the barren years in between. I was hooked. Although 1978 and 1979 were banner years, there wasn't another desert-wide spectacle until 1998. The rarity of these good years has only cemented my addiction. As soon as the spectacle fades, the memory feels as much like a dream as my first experience. I like to dream."

This explains why from January to May Mark huddles over his Web site, sharing hourly reports from friends and issuing predictions on the next flower eruption, as if a volcano of riotous color threatened the nation's eyesight. He speaks reverently of the trophy years-1941, 1978, 1979 and 1998-and even the splendid runner-up seasons that come along every six or seven years: 1973, 1983, 1992, 1993 and 2001. Unfortunately, despite a wet winter, 2005 didn't make the all-stars.

I had assumed that flower-followers would have a snappy nickname, like Petal Posse, Camera Commandos or Gang Green, but Mark says they aren't that organized. And unlike birders, they don't keep life lists, preferring instead to see the greatest games, not every player on every team.

George called again, worried about the spotty display, although most of us would kill to savor such an outburst. But George wanted ballroom carpets of flowers, not pretty throw rugs. I tried to calm him by reminding him that the desert frequently looks dead, brown and drab, so we're grateful even for green. "Think of it this way," I offered, "green is a color, too." He did not seem mollified.

Two days later, the phone rang. It was calm, unflappable George again. "The flowers are unbelievable! I've never seen anything like it! Oceans of purples and blues! Get down here!"

A flower-chaser stands somewhere between a raving tornado-chaser and a delirious NASCAR fan. While the wildflower season persists, Phoenix hosts a Nextel Cup race, and the fleet of brightly painted racecars and hauler trucks rival the colorful mountain slopes beyond the track. For an afternoon, the cars flash around the oval at nearly 200 mph like a swirl of flowers in a dizzying cyclone.

So why are some wildflower years spectacular and others ordinary? The causal chain of meteorological highs and lows and Pacific Oscillations is enough to glaze my eyes, but fortunately I don't need to know all about the engine to enjoy driving the car. Basically, some winters are wetter and warmer than others. Seeds from past years wait patiently for perfect conditions-50 to 70 degrees during daytime between October and February, plus a regular train of storms, each dropping more than half an inch of rain. When that bell rings, the seeds explode and grow like, well, weeds. Some dry years we may see a single floweratop a short stalk; other years, following El Niños, we find hundreds of flowers on a bush as big as a VW.

My phone rang again and another friend shouted, "Come to the Kofa!" I hit the road before dawn, but I was not the only one chasing flowers. On the highway, I met head-on millions of butterflies looking for plants on which they can lay their eggs. Mostly they were painted ladies, which rely on stored fat to fly for hundreds of miles. Later I learned that the butterfly bloom extended from Death Valley to Tucson. I winced every time one splattered on the windshield, comforting myself with the hope that enough painted ladies would lay eggs to ensure the next explosive generation-even after the wasps, birds, and beetles eat their fill.

When I stopped for gas in Gila Bend, a cactus wren picked my car's grill for butterflies and bugs. The gas station owner and his brother raved about the flowers along the highway south of town. I regaled them with stories of globe mallows taller than my upstretched arm and socks stained yellow with pollen, but their stories soon topped mine. A little farther down the road, I pulled into a rest stop to get a look at a brilliant patch of yellow. I watched as a young father and his wife led three giggly youngsters up a short trail through roadside flowers. He was on crutches, but gamely urged them on with "We gotta see this."

At the Kofa National Wildlife refuge I met up with photographers Jack Dykinga, John Shaw, Larry and Donna Ulrich, and Jeff Foott. Like gold prospectors gleaning news of the latest strike, they had been in touch by cell phones for weeks to share tips