AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
When I think of the desert, I think of tumbleweeds bouncing on dry, cracked earth, no signs of life other than sun-bleached cow skulls and maybe a lizard doing some pushups. But that's not really the case, and especially not in Death Valley right now. There's a carpet of desert gold wildflowers in the driest place in North America.
ABBY WINES: Especially late afternoon in the golden hour just before sunset, you're looking up at the hillside. It looks like there are these glowing yellow flowers and stadium seating just covering the entire hillside.
RASCOE: Abby Wines is a park ranger at Death Valley National Park. It's the park's biggest superbloom since 2016. But how does such an arid place produce such a spectacular display? Joining us now to explain is Tiffany Pereira, an ecologist and research scientist at the Desert Research Institute. Welcome.
TIFFANY PEREIRA: Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.
RASCOE: Well, these flowers are blooming in Death Valley, where it's not just exceptionally dry, it also has the record for the Earth's hottest recorded temperature. So how are these little flowers thriving?
PEREIRA: Yeah. So when it comes to wildflower blooms like this, superblooms or any wildflower displays any year, we have to talk about seeds. And so our desert species, in particular, have adapted to live in environments where precipitation, rainfall, might not come in sufficient amounts to bloom every single year. So these seeds that are in the ground, we call that a soil seed bank of all these different species, are just waiting in the soil for the right temperature, right rainfall requirements for them to bloom. And some of them can lay dormant in the soil for up to a decade or more.
RASCOE: So are there kind of knock-on effects or larger effects to, you know, other species that maybe depend on these wildflowers?
PEREIRA: Absolutely. So in Death Valley right now, when I was there a couple of weekends ago, there are caterpillars of the sphinx moth all over the place. We saw hundreds of them, and that's just one example. Other species rely on these wildflowers for their food, such as the desert tortoise, which is a threatened species. They're having a feast day right now on all the annual wildflowers that are up and about. And in years when we don't have good rainfall, we don't have the right temperature conditions for these peak blooms to occur, they don't have a lot of food to eat, and they've adapted to be able to withstand those years, too. But when you get years like this, it's a bonanza for them.
RASCOE: What makes a superbloom a superbloom versus a regular bloom?
PEREIRA: Yeah. So no hard, fast definition for this. A lot of times, I like to say all blooms are super. But I think when you start seeing those carpets of gold, carpets of orange, purple, yellow, I think that's when you get into that superbloom territory. And it's important for people to go out and experience these natural phenomena when they happen and to do it in a responsible way.
RASCOE: OK. So don't pick the flowers. Look at them, but don't try to take them home.
PEREIRA: Exactly. Don't take them home. They're not going to get very far when we take them out of the ground. And don't step on them either.
RASCOE: OK. That's Tiffany Pereira, an ecologist and research scientist at the Desert Research Institute. Thank you so much for joining us.
PEREIRA: Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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