Subtropical Desert Plants

Subtropical desert plants include the stately saguaros of the Sonoran Desert.

One of the world's most extensive belts of deserts lie in association with the subtropical high-pressure areas fringing the equatorial latitudes. Australia's interior deserts, the Sahara in North Africa and the arid complexes in the borderlands of the American Southwest and northern Mexico are examples. Even amid stretches of barren sand or rock, plants well adapted to aridity survive.

Types

Many of the plants of the subtropical deserts are grasses or shrubs, like the tufted grass of Chile's Atacama Desert or the spinifex shrubs common to Australian drylands. Plants of larger stature do grow; however, the saguaro and cardon cacti of the U.S. Southwest and Mexico are the biggest of their kind, while various desert palms mark oases from Arizona to North Africa.

Adaptations

Many desert flowering plants are pollinated by insects, hummingbirds or bats. For example, the American Southwest hosts a number of species of yucca each pollinated by its own kind of yucca moth. This relationship includes the famous Joshua tree of the Mojave Desert.

Communities

Subtropical desert plants in association with one another often form distinct ecological communities. For example, sandhill canegrass may colonize dune ridges with buckbush in Australia's Strzelecki Desert. A variety of Sonoran and Mojave desert species, from saguaro to oaks, mingle in some parts of the Arizona Upland, creating a diverse blend of communities.

References

• "Physical Geography: A Landscape Appreciation"; T.L. McKnight; 1999
• World Wildlife Fund - Terrestrial Ecoregions: Atacama Desert
• "A Sierra Club Naturalist's Guide to the Deserts of the Southwest"; P. Larson; 1977
• "Natural History of the North East Deserts"; M.J. Tyler et al. (eds.); 1990

Resources

• NatureWorks: Deserts