Fiery Orange Horizons



Ocotillos cover the open desert behind our home.

I love ocotillo season, the time of year when the graceful, vase-shaped shrub flashes fiery orange, fox-tail shaped flowers.   Ocotillo is indigenous to the Sonoran Desert and is not a cactus, though at certain times of the year when its leaves have dropped, it looks like a bunch of tall, thorny sticks stuck into the ground at soft angles.  The flowers bloom at the very end of these tall sticks. 

Hummingbirds find the flowers irresistible, as do verdin, the Sonoran Desert's answer to chickadees.  Spring is prime-time for displays of the showy tubular blossoms, though the shrub often reblooms after summer monsoon rains and in the Fall.   The flowers can be eaten, and when fresh, make tangy additions to salads.  The dried flowers are used in tea.  Some homeowners use the straight, long branches as fencing; often the plant will root and become a living fence. 

For me, as I look across the open desert, the blooming ocotillo make the landscape appear like a sea of hot orange.  It is an interesting, beautiful, and useful Sonoran Desert icon.