portfolio

wild blooms THE DESERT'S FLORAL UPRISING IN SPRING MOVES MAN TO WORDS

(THIS PAGE) Surprising, incongruous, the wild beauty of a hedgehog cactus blossom challenges expectations of the sometimes harsh desert environment. FRED YOUNG (OPPOSITE PAGE) Startling in their intensity, the hedgehog cactuses' magenta flowers enliven this view along the Apache Trail in the Superstition Mountains. DAVID MUENCH

Quietly they bloom. A noiseless riot of color.

Wildflowers of the desert in springtime render many of us speechless. We're in awe of the delicate shapes that belie the tenacity required to present their show. This soundless uproar of nature has inspired man to words from 15th-century songs avowing the flowers' glory to 20th-century naturalists' essays maintaining their importance in desert life. A selection of some of those writings follows: "It is no place for flowers. "And yet with all the struggle they serenely blossom in season, perpetuate their kinds, and hand down the struggle to the new generation with no joy of vigor abated, no title of hope dissipated. . . . It is quite another country when you come to examine it piece by piece."

(RIGHT) Spring's brilliant green finery cloaks a rocky volcanic slope in the Ajo Mountains. LAURENCE PARENT (OPPOSITE PAGE) Showy yellow flowers mark the spiny pads of an Engelmann's prickly pear cactus. JACK DYKINGA (FOLLOWING PANEL, PAGES 26 AND 27) Mexican goldpoppies and red owl clover decorate the decaying skeleton of a cholla cactus in the Puerto Blanco Mountains. LAURENCE PARENT

A PORTFOLIO

"With flowers You paint, O Giver of Life! With songs You give color."

(Told by Aztecs, recorded by 16th-century Spanish friars) "There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords."

(ABOVE) An extreme close-up reveals celestial patterns in a common thistle blossom. CHUCK LAWSEN (RIGHT) The soft light of a spring morning caresses a hillside covered with lupines and Mexican goldpoppies in the Superstition Wilderness. GEORGE STOCKING

"Now the land is all ablaze. ... Every golden cup is filled With a nectar sun-distilled; And the perfumes, Nature's prayer, Sweetens all the desert air ..."

A cactus of the mountains and high desert, the claret cup displays unexpected splashes of springtime color on rocky slopes to elevations of 9,000 feet. RICHARD MAACK