Spring in the Desert

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 115, 5 September 1941, Page 5

Spring in the Desert

HE plants that loom large in the desert flora of the United States are those that by some special development of the root system or of the structure of the leaves are able to pick water up quickly and to store it against evaporation during the day. Such are the members of the cactus family, a group of plants confined to the American deserts. These are

present in immense variety: the prickly pear with its rounded fleshy leaves; the giant sahuaro rising to a height of forty feet or more; the round barrel-cacti. which when cut in half will yield enough water to give a man a drink. (Often enough it has proved a life-saver in this respect.) Then there is the sagejust like our garden variety, and just as fragrant. I shall never

forget the scent of sage that filled the air when the transcontinental express set me down at 4 o'clock one summer mofning in the Arizona desert a few miles from the Mexican border. A most amazing feature of the desert flora is the flowering of the desert in a wet spring, when such occurs. Millions of annuals come into a brief existence and flower in all the colours of the rainbow, while the cacti and other more permanent members of the desert flora also burst into bloom on a gorgeous scale.-(" The American Landscape." Dr. F. J. Turner, 4YA, August 12,)