The Sahara Desert is often considered bereft of life. While this perception is partially true, there are many Sahara Desert plants. 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.
Following the last Ice Age the Sahara desert was quite different than it is at present. Sahara Desert plants were far more abundant, and of the type that thrived on much more water. Now not only are the plants there able to survive with little water, they can thrive with little water. It’s just like animals that adapt to cold conditions. They’d be in trouble in places that were much warmer.
Typical Sahara Desert plants include shrubs and grasses. Grasses in particular can get by with not much water because they tend to spread over such a large area and therefore can taken in enough moisture to survive. These desert grasses aren’t like the lush green lawns found in suburban yards, but they survive in an environment where not much can make it. 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. Losing a lot of moisture would doom a plant. Evaporation goals wild over the wide expanse of a leaf. Needles and spines, however, don’t have as much surface area and thus evaporation is less rapid. Cacti develop thick trunks to protect their water from surface evaporation. Hanging onto every drop of available moisture is most important.
Then there’s the salty soil Sahara desert plants have to deal with. Thus many of the plants in the desert are halphytes, which are plants that can tolerate high salt concentrations.
Sure the Sahara Desert isn’t an ideal place for plants to live. But Sahara desert plants do their best because where there’s a will there’s a way.
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