BOTANICAL ENCOUNTERS: The Atacama Desert Blooms!

k-england
Sep 30
4 min read

Words and pictures by Ida K. Rigby, for Let’s Talk Plants! October 2025.

The Atacama Desert Blooms!

With a little nostalgia we leave southern Africa behind and move to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. There will be no more elephants visiting camp.

In fact, there will be no more camps, only hotels. I registered for a 2011 Pacific Horticultural tour to Chile. Meteorologists predicted that conditions were building for a potential forty-year bloom on the Atacama. Some of us therefore delayed making plane reservations until it became clear that what was heralded as a 40-year bloom would blanket the desert, and we would have a pre-trip extension to the Atacama. An Atacama superbloom is called the Desierto Florido. Normally the Atacama gets 0.47 inches of rain a year; in some areas rain has never been recorded. Coastal plants get moisture from fog.

Along the coast we spent gloomy days shrouded in fog. On September 20, 2011, we flew from Santiago to Copiapó.

You may remember Copiapó from the fall of 2010 when the world stood still for 69 days while we waited for word of the 33 miners trapped 2,300 feet below ground. On our second day we passed the narrow dirt road to that mine. Later in the trip, in Talca, we visited a museum where some of the survivors had spoken just the day before. We of course wished we had been a day earlier just to see these men.

Upon arrival near Copiapó we were so eager to see a flower that we immediately stopped at a field and took a walk.

The terrain seemed disappointedly barren, but far in the distance we saw what appeared to be an expanse of white. Could it be flowers? A salt flat? A mirage created by wishful thinking? To our delight it emerged as a field overflowing with Solana baccata.

We were ecstatic, but then we had no idea what truly overwhelming sights were awaiting us a few days later.

Lizards, mostly various species of the smooth throated lizards endemic to the area, were the only creatures we saw.

They eat insects, including scorpions. There are a few birds of prey and vultures in the area; local mammals include mice and foxes. The coastal hills have a few more bird species. One member of our group did have an animal encounter. She decided to take a walk around a dry lakebed next to our hotel in Bahia Inglesa and was bitten by a dog. We ascertained that it was guarding an unfenced private property so was probably not rabid. Still, it’s a cautionary tale about wandering about in unfamiliar territory.

We spent a few days in the foothills and canyons by the sea.

On our walks we encountered surprisingly few other people, perhaps half a dozen total, drawn to the Desierto Florido. A subsequent bloom in 2015, due to torrential downpours, drew more visitors. Recently, overuse is creating permanent damage. Motorsports; mining; livestock grazing, particularly goats; ...

... plant poaching, especially cacti and bulbs; and collecting firewood all threaten this fragile desert ecosystem. According to the World Wildlife Fund the roads that now threaten the delicate areas have been constructed within the last 12 years. The same World Wildlife Fund website gives a good introduction to the Atacama. It describes the coastal area as a place where coastal slopes create a fog zone with plant communities in the small hills and gorges from sea level to 3,000 feet. Short-lived annuals, some perennials and a few woody shrubs survive in “fog oasis” or “fog meadows”. There are some 550 species of vascular plants. The ecological balance is particularly delicate in areas like the Atacama where harsh extremes necessitate specific adaptations that themselves increase vulnerability. Well adapted endemics are often confined to small areas so are particularly sensitive to change. (https:// www.worldwildlife.org/ecoregions/nt1303)

In l997, the Comision del Desierto Florido de la Region de Atacama was set up by the Chilean government and reactivated in 2015 as pressure on the area mounted. In 2022, the municipality of Copiapó instituted fines, and in 2023, the Desierto Florido National Park was established. There are also smaller, officially designated protected areas.

A National Geographic article notes that there are 200 species of flowers in the Atacama, which extends some 994 miles along the Pacific coast. Typically there is enough rain for some bloom every five to seven years, when just enough rainfall washes off the protective coating from some seeds, and ephemerals emerge from the desert floor. (See One of Earth’s Driest Places Experience Rare Flower Boom | National Geographic)

A typical low-lying area or “fog meadow” that we ...