Arizona Highways has subscribers in more than 100 countries, and Marianne Schneider, who emailed us recently from her native Switzerland, is one of them.
"For more than a decade, I have been an Arizona Highways subscriber, and I have deeply admired (and with envy) your wildflower issues," she writes, "although we spent one or two months in Arizona and Texas every year to see them on the spot."
She continues: "In 2012, I bought me a bag of goldpoppy seeds, and, as you can see from the attached photos, beautiful wildflowers grow in Switzerland as they do in Arizona. I am very proud of my goldpoppy meadow, although it does not have Arizona size."
Beautiful pictures, Marianne. Arizona natives and frequent visitors will recognize these as Mexican goldpoppies (Eschscholzia californica ssp. mexicana), which are a subspecies of California poppies. They're frequently found in the Sonoran Desert, and we wouldn't have guessed they would thrive in the Swiss environment, but perhaps we underestimated them.
Do you have any Arizona-native plants growing in your yard or garden outside Arizona? Send us a photo and let us know!