Turkish poppies aren’t native to New Mexico and they don’t show up every single spring. When they do make an appearance, it’s usually for a couple of weeks — but this year they’ve bloomed for over a month.
I think their centers look like little iced cupcakes.1
The backlit poppy below is one of my favorites from this year. The flower petals are just translucent enough to make the colors really vivid, without the bright reflection in the straight-on shots above.
Claret cup cactus blossoms, which are native, generally make even more infrequent and briefer appearances than the poppies. With a single exception, all the claret cup cacti I’ve ever seen in the Sandia foothills are mounds no more than 2 feet in diameter, with most only about a foot wide.2
The one exception, which is 3-5 feet wide, is above. It lives roughly five yards off the trail I hike multiple times each week, year round,3 yet I never once noticed it until it burst into bloom about a month ago.
The blossoms are between one and two inches in diameter and stay open for only a few days.
Here’s one more photo of a poppy, looking quite a bit like a cup itself, with a blur of yellow wildflowers in the background.
I take most of these foothill photos on morning walks prior to breakfast … so it’s quite possible that hunger influences my perceptions.
It’s an unofficial trail on the north side of a canyon. Its southern exposure prevents snow from accumulating on it in the winter and, if I get out early enough in the summer, the mountains to the east keep it in shadow longer than most of the rest of the canyon.
Love these red beauties! Thanks!
Such perfect clarity - beautiful photos of the natural gifts of the Sandia.