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The Enduring Sahara Desert Plants
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Mention the Sahara Desert to anyone and they’ll describe a barren wasteland with no life and no hope. But enough Sahara desert plants exist to make this thought untrue. It’s not a matter of enough water, or too much heat during the day and cold at night, but a matter of how life has found a way to adapt to and survive in this unusual environment.
Some aquatic plants persist in the same way as do annual plants, with dormant stages in their life history that are stimulated to develop by occasional sufficient rainfall. Although being a desert area, one can notice annual rainfall in many regions of this vast land area.
Shortly after the last Ice Age is a Sahara Desert wasn’t the same as it is now. The types of Sahara desert plants that existed there received much more moisture. Not only do the plants there survive with little moisture, a lot of moisture would actually kill them. Consider species that live in places like Antarctica. It seems harsh where they live, but put them into a warmer climate and they won’t last for very long.
Typical Sahara Desert plants include shrubs and grasses. Shrubs often have large root systems that pull moisture from a very large area. The grasses in the desert won’t become sick and green like they would in a suburban yard, but they do okay. The trees are similar, don’t look for thick canopies.
Sahara desert plants don’t often have wide leaves because there’s too much surface area there. Hot, dry conditions of a desert cause rapid evaporation. Plants can’t afford to lose too much moisture. Wide leaves provide too much surface for evaporation. But thin needles don’t promote evaporation. For a similar reason cactus have thick trunks, so the water within is further from the surface where evaporation takes place. Hanging onto every drop of available moisture is most important.
Then there’s the salty soil Sahara desert plants have to deal with. Halphytes thrive in the desert, that is plants that are fine with a lot of salt.
Sure the Sahara Desert isn’t an ideal place for plants to live. Yet many Sahara desert plants grow and even thrive.
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