Death Valley - A Wildflower Superbloom!

We were very lucky to visit Death Valley during a superbloom!  As far as we can tell, the last superbloom occurred in 2005.  This year, the National Park rangers are ecstatic about the number and variety of wildflowers running riot all over the valley.

We spotted at least 13 different varieties of wildflowers on our hikes in various parts of Death Valley. This bright orange California Dotter was perhaps the most spectacular.  It seems to find a place on another host plant and can take various surprising shapes.  When we first arrived at the park, we only spotted a handful, but by the time we left in late February, they were everywhere:

This little purple cutie is known as the Desert Five-Spot.  It showed up sparsely in each of the places we hiked:

We think this is known as Fremont's Pincushion:

...and here is cute little Golden Desert Snapdragon:

While this photo didn't turn out well artistically, still, it represents another entrant in our wildflower parade - we think, the delicate Golden Evening Primrose.  This was the only specimen we saw:

This we think is the Gravel Ghost - a mite out of focus:

The following purple flowers were hard to identify, but we saw purple wildflowers everywhere. Only the Desert Gold, shown further below, was more numerous:

This white-and-yellow flower eluded our identification:

But here, in all its glory, is the Desert Gold, which appears everywhere in the park this season, blanketing hillsides and canyon floors, cheering up hikers everywhere in Death Valley:

Finally, we saw a good number of these little bushes with yellow blooms but weren't certain what their name is.  Still, they deserve a place in our show of Death Valley wildflowers:

If you want a more professional and well-edited glimpse of the Death Valley superbloom, here is a National Park Service video of the superbloom posted this month on the park's website.  It may give you a sense how special this year's bloom really is!