The Gobi Expands Its Palette

I don’t think I’ve ever said otherwise, but this past weekend trip to the Eastern Gobi was really fantastic, for several unique reasons. One of these I’ll relate to you here, mostly in pictures. It concerns that most precious and rare element in the relentlessly arid desert – moisture.

Six of us traveled down together – OK, 5 ½, one being a semi-feral six-year old boy. Three female relatives of the boy occupied one compartment, while my new friend Daniel and I shared another with other Mongolians. They turned out to be Sainshand residents who were very devoted to Danzan Ravjaa and spoke some English, so we began chatting away.

Como siempre, the subject of weather came up, and I asked them if it had rained at all in the Gobi this summer. One of the women replied, in a whisper usually reserved for offering thanksgiving to the deity of your choice or describing how the image of the Madonna and Child turned up on your tuna sandwich, “Four days in August alone.”

Now those of you in the American Midwest may be snorting in contempt, but in the Gobi Desert this is a stone cold miracle, and as with all true miracles, clear signs appear.

On one of my first Gobi visits, and in the slide shows I presented in America this past year, I fished for chuckles with this inimitable image of the view from the camp where I stay:

Well, just to give an initial impression, I took a similar picture from the same location:

Amazing, huh? Desert plants are, naturally, adapted to their environment. This means that when any rain falls, the seeds sprout extremely quickly and mature low to the ground. You can almost watch the whole cycle unfold all the way to seeding out.

I’d never seen this particular stretch of desert support anything more than widely scattered tufts of nearly nothing. I mean, this year we had herders coming through. Soccer and basketball games had to be called on account of grazing!

Marveling at the transformation actually sparked a couple of Buddhist thoughts (in one day – this can be said in the same awestruck tones as "four days of rain in August").

The first concerned the deceptiveness of appearances. As far as our senses are concerned, such places seem utterly barren and lifeless. I still laugh when I recall Khamtrul Rinpoche from Lhasa taking a short walk with me there and remarking with a chuckle, “The worst place in Tibet – Ngari – is better than this place.” But the conclusions we form based on the data brought in through our sense doors is so often mistaken, as in this case. So much is happening in the desert, it’s so full of life, but we don’t think it could possibly exist because we can’t see it. The truth lies hidden under the surface.

This brought up a corollary thought concerning latency and potential. The seeds in the desert exist, ready to sprout, but they simply will not, cannot, until the proper conditions have assembled. But when those supporting conditions arrive, those seeds cannot help but sprout. It’s their nature. This is very much like the Buddha’s teachings on karma. Our actions – and the motivations which precede them – leave impressions, seeds if you will, in our stream of consciousness. When the proper conditions have assembled, these seeds will ripen, depending on their makeup and relative strength, as collective experience, individual life-forms, the various pleasant and unpleasant experiences within those lives (the result of virtuous and non-virtuous actions respectively), and/or habitual patterns of thinking.

Anyway, let’s look at pictures of pretty flowers, shall we?

I spent a fair amount of time walking the desert, and was so delighted with the outburst of wildflowers that had occurred in the water-gathering depressions and ravines.

I’m not much of a botanist, but I was betting that among the DODR readers there are those who are pretty knowledgeable about flowers (TMK?), so I snapped six pics of the different varieties I encountered. Maybe you could hazard guesses as to their general families in the comments?

More in a couple of days, but I just scored a pirated DVD of The Bourne Ultimatum and it’s time to veg.

Comments

[Bolor]

Yeah, once I was going thru a tourist brochure on Gobi which had dozens of brights flowers listed under flora and thought: "yeah, right". My bad

[jules]

The first of your six flower pictures looks exactly like the Mystery Flower that is growing in my front garden! Whatever it is, it sure is pretty...but I didn't plant it. We've been blaming the squirrels. :)

[Judy]

I am SO not a botanist, but the first one looks like a kind of morning glory to me. Makes sense; they grow and flower very quickly even when there is plenty of water. Beautiful photos!

[TMK]

CT: Here are my total guesses based on some research and squinting at web-optimized photos:

#1: Something in the morning glory family (Convolvulus)
#2: Almost looks like rosemary in the background. Plant in foreground looks really familiar but I can't place it.
#3: Not enough detail.
#4: This one is definitely in the aster family. Maybe Eriophyllum lanosum?
#5: This one looks a lot like what's commonly called ice plant if I'm reading the photo right. Did it have kind of squishy, succulent leaves? If so, probably a Dorotheanus of some kind.
#6: This one's got me stumped. It looks like a Bergenia with begonia flowers or a Begonia with bergenia flowers. But I doubt if either plant would survive an hour in the Gobi.

Again, these are total guesses and if any of your readers are real botanists--please don't laugh too hard. ;-)

TMK

[Mel]

Well, I'll try to see what I can add to TMK's inimitable information, though I make no claims to being a botanist, either. I'm pretty sure that #2 is something in the lily family, and the leaves are much like some type of wild garlic or chives, as are the flowers, for that matter, though I wouldn't want to place bets on edibility. #3 is a bit too hard to make out, but the general shape and what I can see of the flowers makes me think a vetch or something similar in the legume family. #5 makes me think a euphorb of some sort, but they're such a highly varied group of plants that I would in no way feel comfortable pushing the case for that. #6 - are you sure you didn't just stick somebody's houseplant in the dirt?

[Emma]

I don't have any expertise, but that first, morning-glory-like one looks similar to this noxious weed we get out in Colorado. The common name is bindweed, but my mom calls it the Weed from Hell, because once it shows up in your yard, it's almost impossible to eradicate. Ours has broader leaves than that one, but I'm willing to bet they're related. (Because, in the desert 'weed' can just mean 'something that actually grows without help from humans'.)

[Konchog]

Thanks! Great responses! I searched the web and can't come up with any resource on Gobi plants. But you know what I really got out of hearing from y'all? That my new favorite word is "euphorb." I can imagine exactly the kind of person to whom such an epithet would be attached. "Fer cryin' out loud, wouldja quit acting like a total euphorb?!" "I think there's a euphorb in my abbatoir." What? Why is everyone staring at me like that?

[TMK]

CT: I forgot to mention how much I like the photo you took of all the different plants in the foreground with the red "hill" in the background. And Mel's "euphorb" is actually short for "euphorbia." Play with that one for a while. BTW, I couldn't find any info about Gobi flora online either. ;-)

[Ryan]

Does this help?

http://raise.suiri.tsukuba.ac.jp/new/plant_album/index.html

[Konchog]

Euphorbia! Thanks, cuz. That site helped, as did this one, though both assume a pretty deep botanical knowledge and familiarity with scientific classification. Wish they had some arranged just by color. I'm going to check local bookstores. Nonetheless, with a little sleuthing, here are my guesses for three:

#1: Convolvula arvensis
#2: Allium mongolica
#6: Rheum nanum

More later. No idea why I'm so obsessed with this.

[Emma]

Score! If that top one IS Convolvulus arvensis, then it IS our bindweed from back home. (Which would make sense, since it's apparently native to Asia. I'm willing to bet it's not even a weed out there. We really do plants a disservice by translocating them.)