The Ocotillo Bush

The Ocotillo Bush

The picture on the left is a fine example of the ocotillo or Fouquieria Splendens, a spiny flowering bush that grows in the Anza-Borrego Desert in San Diego County. The picture was taken and presented to me by a visitor to the old Vallecito Stage Station and County Park where I functioned happily as caretaker and hostess for three years from 1990-93.

There are 11 varieties of this bush, most of which grow in Mexico, but also appear from Texas to these southern deserts of California. Most of the year the shrub appears to be a bundle of dead spiny sticks rising in an ugly bouquet from 8 to 25 feet in the air. But the shrub blooms faithfully every spring, no matter how dry the season, in gorgeous scarlet tubular shaped blossoms along the edge and near the top of the branch. Sometimes in very dry springs no leaves appear. I don't know if the blooms have an odor because those spines are wicked weapons that could attack one's nose at the slightest breeze. During seasons of good rain, the accordion-like surface of the branches turn green, fill out to a rounder shape, and develop clusters of fleshy leaves that appear before the bush flowers. Each bush has a least a dozen and up to 75 branches that grow  from 8 to 25 feet into the air and are topped by a foot or more of red flowers. To me, this bush is the most spectacular plant growing in the Anza-Borrego Desert. It has also been called: Candlewood, Slimwood, Coach whip, Cactus vine, Flamingsword, and Jacob's Staff. Other plants I have observed growing in the same area near Vallecito County Park are the creosote bush, brittle bush, and the burro bush.  There are many other spectacular wildflowers whose names I can't recall that appear in the Anza-Borrego Desert every spring. It is said that this spring of 2008 is a good year there for wild flowers.

This particular ocotillo bush that I show you is growing near Vallecito County Park along S2, a blacktop county road that stretches from the village of Ocotillo on I-8, to Warner Springs, where it joins California Route 79 northward into Riverside County. The route through the area began as an ancient Indian trading route to other tribes living in the Mohave Desert along the Colorado River. After the Spanish settled in San Diego in 1769, it was used by the Spanish soldiers trying to establish a land route to Sonora.  In1849 it became an important trail to the gold fields,it  and for a few tumultuous years it was part of the route of the famous Butterfield Mail. But those are subjects for other stories that I will do my best to telll you at another time.