Student Article
Ten Remarkable Desert Plants That Survive in the Harshest Places on Earth
Desert (noun): A dry place with very little rain.
Fruit (noun): A sweet part of a plant that we can eat.
Cactus (noun): A spiky plant that stores water.
Bark (noun): The outside covering of a tree.
Drought (noun): A long time with little or no rain.
Did you know that some plants can live in places that are super hot or really dry? Some even grow in Antarctica, the coldest place on Earth! These special plants are called desert plants, and they have awesome tricks to survive.
From spiky to sweet: meet the desert stars
One plant, called the Joshua tree, lives in the Mojave Desert and can grow as tall as a house! Another one, the date palm, gives us yummy fruits called dates. There’s also a spiky one called the prickly pear cactus, which has sweet fruit and flat, paddle-like pads.
Smart ways to get water
In Chile and Peru, a tree called the tara catches fog to get water. The saxaul tree in the Gobi Desert holds water in its bark! The western juniper cuts off water to its own branches during droughts to save the rest of the tree.
A tree that clones?
Laperinne’s olive tree lives in the Sahara Desert. It makes new trees by copying itself. This helps the tree live in hard places, but the new trees are all the same.
Even cold deserts have plant life
In Antarctica, a tiny plant called pearlwort survives with no rain at all.
Helping people and animals
Date palms grow sweet fruit that people have eaten for a long time. And, in Africa, a plant called Welwitschia gives food and water to animals like oryx and zebras.
These plants are super cool because they can live in tough places. They help animals and people too, by giving food, shade, or water.
© Jo Caird / Our Media
Desert (noun): A dry place with very little rain.
Fruit (noun): A sweet part of a plant that we can eat.
Cactus (noun): A spiky plant that stores water.
Bark (noun): The outside covering of a tree.
Drought (noun): A long time with little or no rain.