The beginning of spring in the Tucson area is a time of beauty and striking contrasts in the natural world — from dazzling wildflower and cactus blooms in lower elevations to small remnant snowfields high in the Catalina Mountains.
It’s that elevation range — about 2,500 feet in the deserts of Tucson to more than 9,000 feet at the top of the Catalinas — that gives the region a rich mix of terrain, vegetation and weather.
Daily high temperatures in Tucson have often been in the 80s this month, even as scattered patches of snow cling to upper slopes of the mountains.
Desert areas are abloom with gold poppies, brittlebush, desert marigolds and other wildflowers, and palo verde trees in many parts of Tucson are laden with thousands of yellow flowers.
Hedgehog cacti, which usually bloom earlier than other cactus species, are showing their pink-purple blooms here and there around the Tucson valley now.
Meanwhile, midway up the Catalina Mountains, stream-side trees are sporting new green growth, and some watercourses are still trickling with snowmelt from higher in the range.
More than a vertical mile above the blossoming desert, evergreen forests of pine and fir are shrugging off the last vestiges of winter — with those remnant patches of snow going, going — if not quite gone.
