Baileya · Sphaeralcea · Encelia

Desert wildflowers are not an annual event. They're a conditional one.

Winter annuals germinate on rain that falls between roughly October and December, and only if enough falls, and only if it's followed by more. A single heavy storm won't do it — the seeds are metering total moisture, not one soaking. Get the sequence right and February through April is spectacular. Get it wrong and the same ground produces almost nothing, and nobody who visits that spring will believe you about the year before.

The seeds don't lose anything by waiting. Desert annual seed stays viable in the soil for years — sometimes decades — and a given year's bloom draws on a bank accumulated over many seasons. A great wildflower spring is a withdrawal, not a harvest.

Desert marigold hedges its bets differently, running as a short-lived perennial that can flower in almost any month it gets water. Globemallow is a perennial subshrub that comes back from a woody base, which is why you see it on roadsides where nothing else survives the grading.

One warning about globemallow: it's called sore-eye poppy for a reason. The fine star-shaped hairs on the leaves work loose and irritate. Handle it, then rub your eye, and you'll only do it once.