Spring Flowers in the Desert

Spring has come to Arizona and with it an eruption of colour. Desert trees, wildflowers and cacti all flower in April and May and the colours can be truly spectacular. We have a profusion of colourful plants in our backyard including our favourite, the Echinopsis cactus. Flowers can bloom in a variety of colours but most seem to be white. We’ve watched three blooms on our cactus, each about a week apart. When the flowers bloom it all happens in the space of 3-4 hours. Their beauty is short-lived; within 24-36 hours the blooms wither and ultimately drop off. They’ll be back next year at about the same time.

Following are three photos taken during the latest blooming of our cactus. On this occasion, we had seven flowers emerge at once. The first picture shows the entire plant with all seven flowers evident.

The next shot zooms in on the five flowers on the taller branch of the plant.

This final picture is a close-up of the three blooms on the lower left part of the plant. They show a little better, being in the direct sunlight.

The final flower I’ll show today is a Chilean variety, referred to simply as a “yellow flowered cactus”. I’m presenting it as a time lapse video, constructed from 75 photographs taken over a 2-1/2 hour period. I began photographing at about 7:30 am when I noticed the flowers beginning to open. The photographs were taken at 2 minute intervals, using a programmable shutter control. I set up the camera on a tripod, started the program and let it snap away until about 10:00 am, when the flowers appeared to be fully open. I then used  “Photo to Movie” software to put together a 37 second video. Compressing the timeline from 2-1/2 hours to less than a minute allows us to see the the movement of the flower as it opens.

Just click on the URL below to view the video. You can enlarge it to full screen but you will lose resolution on anything other than a small screen. I’m limited in the size of images I can use with the blog software.

You’ll notice the flickering light. The cactus is under a tree and the changes in light are caused by a light breeze moving the tree’s leaves.

Yellow Cactus Flower_1