Plants of Southern California: Anza-Borrego Desert Annuals From Seedling To Flower

In 2007-2008, I began taking pictures of baby plants in the Anza-Borrego Desert area near Borrego Springs. The baby plants germinated from the 0.88 inches of rain from the 11/30/07-12/1/07 storm. Rainfall prior to that was minimal, and did not germinate any plants. The plants were sustained by 0.04 inches of rain on 12/7/07, and then 0.39 inches from the 1/4/08-1/7/08 storms.

This page shows the progression of seedlings I have photographed so far. I'll continue to photograph specimens until they bloom or die, whichever comes first.

Caveats: The photographs almost always come from different areas on each date, and hence show some plants at different stages of development than in other areas. This also means there is no guarantee that the plants shown under a given name are even the same species. In particular, I'm not sure whether the pictures under the name Camissonia californica are all the same species. The scales of each picture are different. I've scaled each picture to show the plants at approximately the same screen size, and hence the pictures are blown up more when the plants are tiny.

Tentative identifications are given for the seedlings in each column. I'm fairly confident of the determination of Phacelia distans, since I photographed it at known locations of this species on the Borrego Palm Canyon Trail. Also, Erodium cicutarium and Brassica tournefortii have distinctive cotyledons and leaves. The other tentative identifications are less certain.

The plant age is given counting 12/1/07 as day 1. Most species were not photographed on every outing, so there are blanks in the table below.

Date	Age (Days)	Phacelia distans	Erodium cicutarium
12/11/07	11
12/15/07	15
12/30/07	30
1/3/08	34
1/7/08	38
1/16/08	47

Date	Age (Days)	Chaenactis fremontii?	Rafinesquia neomexicana?
12/11/07	11
12/15/07	15
12/30/07	30
1/3/08	34
1/7/08	38
1/16/08	47

Date	Age (Days)	Brassica tournefortii	Camissonia californica
12/11/07	11
12/15/07	15
12/30/07	30
1/3/08	34
1/7/08	38
1/16/08	47

Go to:

• Native and Introduced Plants of Southern California