The world’s driest desert blooms into a rare, fleeting flower show

The driest desert on earth, the Atacama Desert in Chile, has amazed both scientists and travellers with a rare outburst of life. This scabrous terrain has been turned into a rainbow of pink, purple and yellow wild flowers that cover miles of desert plain after the rains in the desert that seemingly occur out of the blue.

This is called the Desierto Florido or blooming desert, and it only happens a few times a decade in cases where rainfall is more than the average minimum. The Atacama usually receives a precipitation of less than 2 millimetres of rain per annum, and recent months have experienced some unusual precipitation, which caused more than 200 inactive plant species to come into blossom. The seeds concealed in the soil over the years sprout when the moisture, sunlight, and temperature are all in place.

The most dramatic ones are observed around Llanos de Challe National Park, where spur plants such as Cistanthe longiscapa, Nolana, and Copiapoa thrive on the desert floor. The image metamorphosis attracts tourists and botanists as well as photographers all over the world to see one of the rarest natural scenes. It is viewed by the locals as a gift as well as a reminder of how delicate their environment is.

Ecologists observe that the Atacama bloom is more than a moment of beauty; it is also a significant ecological phenomenon. It sustains insects, birds and small mammals that feed and make use of the flowers as a habitat. Scientists, however, also caution that the timing and intensity of these blooms will change depending on the changes in the climate pattern, and this is a risk to this special cycle.