Amazing Sandy Soil Plants

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Mosses, lichens, and many other plants form dense communities to resist natural disasters. But there are brave plants that are fighting for their survival alone. And they do it successfully

The desert often presents a person with amazing examples of the vitality of earthly nature. In places where a person who knows how to build dwellings, who invented cooling air conditioners, has not been able to adapt to life, there are amazing plants that have managed to take deep roots into the hot sand and have stood under the scorching rays of the sun. Looking at them, you forget that life on the planet came out of the ocean.

Velvichia is amazing

Although there are enough miracles near the house where a person was destined to be born, the widespread opinion that one should follow them beyond the distant lands is sometimes confirmed by life.

One of the overseas wonders is a dwarf tree that has managed to survive from prehistoric times in the hot sands of the Namib Desert, which is considered the oldest on our planet.

Sometimes, for a whole year, heaven will not deign to give a single drop of water to the desert. It would seem that in such conditions life can not be. But the Creator loves to surprise a person. Among the endless sandy expanses, a strange tree suddenly appears.

Over the centuries of his life (and he lives

Velvichia amazing and 2 thousand years old), it slowly increases the width of the trunk, bringing it up to 3 meters in diameter, but the tree is in no hurry to grow in height. From a half-meter in height the tree has only 4 leaves. True, 2 leaves grow together with the trunk, becoming the protection of the plant, and about the other two, you can compose poems and fairy tales.

Wide leathery leaves, like two maiden braids, spread out on both sides of the trunk, slowly increase the length of the whole long life of Velvichia. A dry wind, occasionally arranging sandstorms, flutters the braids, turning them into many scraps, as if trying to age the look of a tree. Indeed, the rags developing in the wind resemble the hairs of Baba Yaga, equal in age to a tree.

The wind also plays a positive role in the life of the tree. Firstly, it facilitates the movement of fog from the ocean, the moisture of which is stored by the plant, so that later it can go without water for a long time. Secondly, the wind pollinates female cones, which grow on the same tree as male cones, but they are larger than male cones. Thus, the wind contributes to the continuation of an amazing kind on the planet.

Such an amazing single plant lives in climatic conditions, it would seem, incompatible with life.

Creeping devil

Another amazing creature of nature, growing only on sandy soil, but already in Mexico.

Mexico is rich in varieties of cacti, among which this miracle stands out for its unusual abilities. The second word in its name, Stenocereus Eruca, means “

Caterpillar". But for the Mexicans, this is real"

Creeping devil ».

Although the cactus does not grow very quickly, adding 25 cm in length annually, in favorable conditions the growth limit reaches 60 cm. Then cacti create problems for the movement of people, forming impassable areas of 5-meter stems covered with dagger-like thorns.

Interestingly, the cactus reproduces in two ways. Like most plants, it has seeds that appear after pollination of large flowers that open at night after the last rain. Since even insects rest at night, the cactus does not have enough pollinators, and therefore it has adapted to clone itself. Children are separated from a large escape, which begin an independent life, replacing the dying parent.

The caterpillar was named for its appearance and method of growth. The cactus seems to creep on the surface of the sandy soil, periodically clinging to it with growing parts and raising the tip of the plant, directed forward above the ground, and the old parts gradually die off