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Desert Lavender, Hyptis emoryi, Palms To Pines Scenic Byway, California

1,350 views · Published 28 December 2012 · 2:35 · Indexed 17 October 2026

Channel: Melvin Wei · 2012 · Science & Technology

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Desert lavender (binomial name Hyptis emoryi) is a shrub with multiple stems that grows in extremely dry environments much like this scenic section of the Palms to Pines Scenic Byway part of Highway 74 in Southern California. As you can see from the end of the video, large dead trunks lie dead at the base of what looks to be a new plant, but based on the small size of all the plants here I would say a wildfire swept past this highway a few years ago and what we're seeing in the regrowth from the roots. The girth of the deadwood matches up with the literature, which states that desert lavender can grow up to nearly 6 meters in height in optimal conditions!

Desert lavender is found in dry washes (a dry wash is the dry bed of an intermittent stream) and rocky slopes up to 900 meters above sea level. It is evergreen or cold deciduous, depending on the location. For me, this is the first time I've learned that a plant can be deciduous in a cold climate and evergreen in a warmer climate. Desert lavender ranges from the Southwestern United States of Arizona, Nevada, and California to Northwestern Mexico in Sonora and Baja California. Although I read that desert lavender typically grows near a water source, this location in which specimens were filmed is among the driest and windiest places I've been too, so I don't see how there could be water underground due to the mountain slope. It looks as if the plants here eke out the most meager of existences just by collecting rainfall in the winter as it comes.

Desert lavender has an aromatic flower scent that makes it one of the favorite flowers of the local bees. California has many species of native loner bees that all have their niches in the local ecology/pollination, and in places like this the native species and insects such as beeflies may be the only pollinators present since European honeybees typically thrive in wetter, more forested microclimates.

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