The Desert is Full of Life

Announcing an online botanical guide I made

This post announces the launch of a website I set up, Wildflowers of Joshua Tree Country, a botanical guide for common plants of the Mojave Desert, showcasing my own photography. Feel free to just go look at it now without reading the rest of this if you want! (But hit the thumbs-up before you go.)

The desert is much misunderstood in western culture. Because we are an agriculturally-based civilization, we judge land on how appropriate it is for farming, and in that context, the desert is considered "useless” and by extension, “lifeless.”

This perspective has a long history. An “eremologist” is one who studies deserts, and the word is derived from the Greek eremos—ἐρημία—which means both “desert” and “lonely.” As detailed by photographer and amateur botanist, Michael L. Charters, at his website, “California Plant Names: Latin and Greek Meanings and Derivations,” forms of eremos signify:

“a lonely place, a place of solitude, a deserted place, solitary, uninhabited" and by extension "of the desert" since a desert is a lonely place that is largely uninhabited.

Uninhabited by agriculturally-civilized humans, that is. But not uninhabited.

When asked to think of a desert, people might picture the dunes of the Sahara, apparently devoid of plant and animal life, but deserts take many other forms. Much of the Mojave Desert in the southwestern US is more gravelly and rocky than sandy, and dunes make up only a small part of its geography, which features mountains, basins, woodlands, watercourses and even a few wetlands. The word “Mojave” comes from Hamakhaave in the Mojave Tribe’s language and means “beside the water.” Their name for themselves, Pipa Aha Macav, “The People By The River,” refers to the Colorado River, which flows on the eastern side of the Mojave Desert, and where the Fort Mojave Reservation is located today.

The Mojave Desert is full of plant and animal life, some of it found nowhere else on earth. The area hosts approximately 1,500 taxa of plants, making it one of the biggest hotspots of biodiversity in California, where most of it is located. It is far from “lifeless.” This level of biodiversity is due in part to the special adaptations and resulting speciation of plants that have made it in this unique environment, but also because the area has suffered less development than others in the state. The central valley, for example, was once home to vast wetlands, slow-moving, braided streams, and riverine woodland, but was drained and domesticated for agriculture. The enormous hit suffered by wildlife there is difficult to estimate, given the few records we have about its baseline upon European arrival, but it’s catastrophic AF.

Unfortunately for the denizens of the amazing Mojave, its sunny conditions, cheap real estate value and low human population density make it an ideal place to site large-scale solar infrastructure. The fact that much of the land is publicly-owned avoids the need for the politically thorny practice of eminent domain.

But the footprints of these solar developments completely wipe out the pre-existing habitat. The areas need to be cleared and graded for construction, and then maintained in a condition where plant life won’t interfere with operation. With these activities, not only is all plant life intitially destroyed, but with it the food sources and homes of innumerable insects, birds and animals, including endangered species. See some before and after pictures of a solar development here, at the Basin & Range website.

There’s something so incredibly sad about the fact that a place like the Mojave Desert—or the Sonoran, or the Great Basin—was able to squeak through the worst of civilization’s destructive maw so far, but is now under the gun. In the case of “green energy,” it’s utterly despicable that unadulterated rape and pillage is not recognized for what it is because of a politicized media narrative that has so many well-meaning people hoodwinked. (Let me be clear that I'm putting the blame squarely on the propaganda, not on the people who believe it. I get why they do. We are daily subjected to the most sophisticated propaganda machine in human history and I am not immune to it.)

For a number of years in the mid 2010s, I spent a portion of my winters camping in the Mojave Desert. I was blessed to experience two different superblooms during that period, including one in Death Valley. I took thousands of photographs, which those who followed me on social media in those days might remember.

During that time, I also put together a botanical guide of what I had seen, and made it available as an e-book. But the e-book never sold well so last winter I dug it out, updated it with new entries and photos, and put it up as a website, free for everyone to view (but it took me this long to announce it, lol).

As a botanical guide the website contains over 200 plant profiles with botanical name, common names, family, etc., plus translations of the Latin names, Native American uses and animal associations. You can browse entries by family, flower color, and life cycle (annual herb, tree, cactus, etc.) All the photos are my own.

My goal is to help people see that the desert is not lifeless or lonely, but is indeed brimming with life, life that deserves to keep living. I further intend that people will be inspired to oppose further human development in the desert, even if it’s for “green energy.” I also hope that people will share it when the subject comes up. Or just with people who appreciate pictures of pretty flowers.

Go check it out here: Wildflowers of Joshua Tree Country

Sample pages: