White Cordia decandra in heavy bloom after a wet winter in the Chinchilla Reserve near the town of Illapel, Chile. On some slopes the shrubs were dense enough to resemble patches of snowfall.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised to see a Cordia species in Chile in September 2017, but I was. This is Cordia decandra, a desert shrub that is surprisingly lush looking given its arid environment. Cordias are a primarily tropical genus of plants in the borage family (Boraginaceae), many with showy flowers and edible, if glutinous, fruits. The wood is dense and hard, and some species are commercially harvested for lumber and charcoal production.

Photographed here at the Chinchilla Reserve, these cordias were not blooming at all a year ago when I first visited since rainfall was sparse, so they escaped my attention in 2016. But not this year! There is a Texas species (C. boissieri) which is almost as pretty as this one, which is named for the 10 stamens ( = decandra) it carries in each flower. Yet another pleasant floral surprise on our Chilean wildflower hunting adventure.

This region averages perhaps only about 6 to 8 inches of rainfall a year (150-200 mm) so seeing these dense evergreen Cordia shrubs loaded with white flowers was unexpected.

The flowers are pure, lucid white with faintly yellow eyes. Oddly, flowers fade to a sort of salmon orange before they dry up and drop off.

The cactus is Eulychnia acida, and the yellow Flourensia thurifera joins drifts of white Cordia decandra in a wonderful floral display at Chile’s Chinchilla Reserve near Illapel.

This plant would be worth trying to grow in the Sonoran Desert! It is clearly drought tolerant, but will it also take the greater extremes of heat and cold in North America, away from the oceanic influences? Not every coastal desert plant is quite as adapted to extremes of heat and drought in interior deserts as one might expect. If you happen to know, please report in a comment below.

Wenbo photographs another cool plant, Loasa tricolor, against a backdrop of Cordia decandra. The abundant vegetation of the spring of 2017 in this part of Chile is testament to the amount of rainfall received here the prior winter. Which, of course, was why we came to see the flower show….

Quite an impressive wildflower display going on there, Chile! As noted above, I was also here the year before, in October 2016, when it was vastly drier with virtually nothing in bloom. The comparisons were remarkable between one year and the next, all thanks to rainfall.

Three different floral hues mingle together on a slope at the Chinchilla Reserve. White Cordia and yellow Flourensia set off against the bluish-purple of Solanum pinnatum, a nightshade related to potatoes and tomatoes.

One parting shot of the colorful desert vegetation growing in the Chinchilla Reserve near Illapel, Chile. The pinkish-red groundcover is mostly some sort of annual Oxalis species, although I haven’t identified which one yet. The larger orange-yellow flowering tree in the wash channel in the distance is probably Acacia caven, now named Vachellia caven. Lovely scene, especially when compared to the tan and dull grayish-green ones I saw in the same valley in 2016.