Desert Spring

Spring ought to be arrested for disturbing the peace. Unquestionably spring is beautiful in colder climes and even in the big cities where man has muddled up the landscape with towering skyscrapers there is no doubt that spring's magic plays havoc with the young and the aged, the wise and the foolish, as aren't we all. Spring in the fruit lands with flowering fruit trees shedding their fragrance and beauty to the soft winds that follow winter is something to see. You'll have to look hard, though. to find any portrait of spring as tantalizing as that of a desert spring. Ordinary work-a-day folks out this way go quietly and peacefully about their business about ten months out of the year, prosaically punching the clock with a regularity that is commendable when presto! spring puts in her appearance and for a couple of months the most regular and steadfast of our neighbors and friends get into such bad habits as staring dreamily out the window and giving funny answers when spoken to. It's spring. brothers and sisters, it's spring. The desert, contrary to the photographers who graciously help us get these pages together, is not "colorful" in the accepted sense. It is bright, the sky above the desert is generally clear as spring water and the mountains and foothills bordering it change coloring during the day but the Please turn to page twenty-three.

CENTER PANEL "GOLDEN COINS OF SPRING" BY GEORGE GEYER. Picacho Peak, historic Arizona landmark on the highway between Coolidge and Tucson, was dressed in a robe of sparkling yellow when Photographer George Geyer happened by one April day. The ground was covered with California poppies (Eschscoltzia Californica). These annuals cover the desert regions of Arizona and California, flowering in March and April. Often a few are in bloom after mid-summer rains. Indians are reported to have used the juice of these flowers in alleviating toothache. Photographer took the picture with a Graflex View Camera equipped with a Zeiss Tessar lens, 5½ inch focal length, f4.5 at 1/5th second. The only battle of the Civil War in Arizona was fought here.

"RAINBOW ON THE HILLSIDE" BY CHUCK ABBOTT. The rains in 1940-41 were generous to the parched hillside and the hillside responded with a array of colorful flowers. The plants bloomed briefly but the flowers did not last long in the warm sun of spring, drying up and leaving seed to await the next winter and spring when the rains would come. The photographer used a Graphic View Camera, 4 x 5 Kodachrome, f18 at 1/10th second.

DESERT SPRING

Continued from page eighteen.

The desert itself is not full of color. The plants living there have too much of a struggle to merely survive let alone to sport giddy colors in dress. That is true until spring shows up on the calendar and then the desert dolls up in all kinds of color and the ablest photographers have a hard time doing justice to the subject. Even in the driest of years the desert responds to spring's touch. Even when the desert hasn't seen a raindrop in years. the cactus flowers put forth their dazzling flowers, the palo verde turns the brightest yellow imaginable, the ocotillos bring forth long purple and reddish blossoms, and even the drabbest of plants, brittle and thorny and tough, will respond to the season. It is simply amazing what spring can do to the desert.

When spring is aided and abetted in her mischief by a "wet" winter, then you see the desert at the height of its loveliness. This past winter has been described as "wet" winter. So much so it interfered with tourist business and caused some hard talk among our steadiest winter visitors who came out here for a warm winter and clear skies. A drought of about seven years duration was broken. While we all apologized about the winter season, we all predicted a wonderful spring, which we are having and which we confidently hope to enjoy until June. The peculiar chemistry of rain and desert soil and sunshine brings forth bright carpets of desert flowers, the lupines and the poppies and gosh only knows what else, all of which are enhanced by panels of green grass. The rains stopped a little bit too soon to give us the same desert we had in the spring of 1941 but April should be the prettiest April our desert has seen in a long, long time. There are signs that May in the desert will be a month when photographers will have a lot of fun in picture-taking and when more sensible people will have a lot of fun just loafing in the sunshine.

"YUCCAS" BY CHUCK. ABBOTT. The photograph was taken near Dragoon in Cochise County with a Graphic View Camera, 4 x 5 Kodachrome, f22 at 1/5th second. The strangely beautiful flowering plants are commonly called "Soapweed," but their more dressed up scientific name is Yucca elata. They belong to the Liliaceae or Lily family. The fibrous leaves are used by the Indians for basketry material. The roots and trunk are crushed and are used as a soap substitute by various tribes of Indians. These plants are found in many parts of the state and flower in May and June. Adult Yucca grow quite tall. Cattle eat the flower stocks of younger plants. Yuccas are pollinated by the little white Yucca Moth. The mutal dependency of the Yucca and the Moth is one of Nature's strangest stories.

"PALO VERDE" BY JERRY MCLAIN. The Palo Verde in bloom is one of the desert's most beautiful trees. The tree shown here is Cercidium microphyllum, the common Foothill Palo Verde (Leguminosae family.) These trees are believed to reach the age of four hundred years. The trees flower in April and May and are completely covered by small yellow flowers that have an odd whitish petal at the top. The long spines or thorns bear minute leaves after flowering, but they drop their leaves during long rainless periods. Nature has equipped them to live and flourish in the desert heat and long droughts. Palo Verde (from the Spanish "green stick or green tree") are dull green in color when not in bloom. The photographer used a Speed Graphic, 4 x 5 Ektachrome, f25 at 1/10th second, on a tripod.

PAGE TWENTY-THREE OF ARIZONA HIGHWAYS FOR APRIL, 1949