SHOSHONE, Calif. — Death Valley National Park’s resident naturalist couple are hoping for a sprawling “superbloom” as much as anyone.

But while all blooms are “super” to trained botanist Naomi Fraga, she’s not so sure this year will meet tall expectations.

“It’s not a uniform germination; there’s not wildflowers everywhere,” said Fraga, director of conservation at the California Botanical Garden. “If people are expecting a sort of technicolor, vast display of flowers in Death Valley, they probably won’t get to see that this year.”

Fraga, who has been trekking out to Death Valley to survey plants for the better part of two decades, has met her match in environmentalist Patrick Donnelly, of the Center for Biological Diversity. The two married at the China Ranch Date Farm in October.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal joined them Monday on an off-road adventure — or, as Donnelly called it, a wildflower “reconnaissance mission” — outside of Shoshone, California, to better understand what visitors should expect this season.

At the 10-year anniversary of the 2016 superbloom that carpeted the desert floor in flowers, observers may have success in locating wildflowers once again. It might just take some more sleuthing and navigation of the more remote sections of the 5,270-square-mile park, which compares to the size of Connecticut.

“I think everyone’s conditioned to be like, ‘It’s a superbloom, or it’s nothing,’” said Donnelly, who said he fell in love with the desert after witnessing the 2005 superbloom. “An average year in the past was a remarkable sight to see.”

More effort required than normal

Botanists generally agree: The lower the elevation, the sooner a patch of budding wildflowers will reach maturity.

While the pair of desert explorers drove through the unpaved roads of the Ibex Hills on the south side of the national park, swaths of green hinted at the bloom to come.

When exactly that will be depends on two factors, Fraga said. Visitors should keep an eye on the weather, she said, because hotter temperatures could spur a faster bloom and rain could cause more sprouts to form.

The blooms in Death Valley are a striking display of abundance in a normally harsh environment, Fraga said.

“In Death Valley, you’re at the very edge of all the extremes,” Fraga said. “You’re in the lowest, the hottest, the driest. Everything is amplified here in this very extreme environment.”

On Friday, Death Valley’s acting deputy superintendent, Abby Wines, told the Review-Journal that the National Park Service is still waiting to see what weather conditions could bring. She predicts that the most colorful displays could come anywhere between mid-February and mid-April.

“It’s definitely green,” she said. “There are going to be flowers, and it’s going to be better than average. That’s about all that we’re really feeling comfortable enough to predict, because it really depends what happens in the next month or so.”

Wines acknowledged that there’s no official definition of a superbloom, but she said rangers have a loose one.

“I’d say it’s a superbloom when you’re just driving by and going, ‘Oh, my, look at all those flowers,’” Wines said. “When it gets to be a landscape view that people want to put on Instagram, that’s what I would consider a superbloom.”

‘Climate whiplash’ threatens future

Fraga, who manages her organization’s seed bank that stores the genetic material of plants that are going extinct, said unpredictable swings in temperatures and rain patterns can have major consequences for wildflower life cycles.

The most critical stage of a wildflower’s life cycle is the end, when it fruits and produces seeds. In the absence of rain, Fraga said, wildflowers can wait many years to begin their yearlong life cycles, surviving intense drought and heat.

“When the rain comes, they all emerge and they show themselves, and they put on a great show that everyone enjoys,” Fraga said. “The pollinators are happy, and the wildflowers contribute significantly to the biodiversity. But they’re temporary, and they’re very fleeting.”

But a poorly timed heat wave can crisp up wildflowers and make them skip their fruiting phase — an increasingly common phenomenon as the climate becomes more unpredictable, she said.

“We can have these whole flushes of carpets of green, billions of plants, and then one heat wave comes, and none of it contributes to the next generation,” Fraga said. “That is what I get anxiety about.”

And it’s not just the annual plants that are being affected, Donnelly said. Intense drought conditions in the past five years wiped out some perennial plants, with some spots that resemble a graveyard of even the hardiest of desert plants, such as creosote bushes.

“The climate whiplash is getting so severe,” Donnelly said. “The drought was pretty catastrophic for us personally, watching in the desert. This whiplash, with extreme blooms and bizarre circumstances, is equally concerning. It ain’t supposed to be this way.”

Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.