Parish's Poppy...

The little Parish's Poppy (Eschscholzia parishii) is one of the most cheerful flowers you'll find out on the desert. It's sometimes called Parish's Gold Poppy or just Gold Poppy, for obvious reasons. We found at least a few of these almost everywhere we stopped on the desert floor, but they were by far the best near the bottom of the little hidden canyon I've described in an earlier post, just south of the much better known Box Canyon. There we found scattered clumps of the Parish's Poppy, with their unstoppably cheerful blooms shining on sand washes, alongside rocks, and even out of the cracks in a boulder.

They are also fairly common on the Carrizo Badlands Overlook and on the plains just to the south of it. There we most commonly found them alongside a rock or in a patch of sand amongst the gravel...