Arms raised to the sky.
-wait for tiny night-flyers
mysterious tree.
Joshua Trees reach for the sky, as per their namesake*. They are emblematic of the Mojave desert and while on our desert ecology field trip, we got to stand in their midst at Joshua Tree National Park**.
These are plants in the Agave family and are in fact “Yuccas”. They are odd-looking, mystical, magical, beautiful. In addition to their stunning appearance, their biology is also fascinating- including their dependence on a moth (a tiny night-flyer!) for pollination. It’s a striking example of symbiosis, and such interdependencies are reminders of the power of natural selection. Big tree, small moth: they need each other for survival.
We had long debates about the question of trees, as both Joshua Trees and Saguaro challenge some conventional ideas on the definition of trees. My off-the-cuff answer when some students asked my view on the topic was “you know a tree if you see one”. And when I view the Joshua Tree, I see a tree.
Perhaps a more botanically sound definition revolves around a tree being a perennial plant having (usually?) one main stem (trunk?), with branches that support photosynthetic tissues (leaves and needles and such). I guess?
Regardless, you feel as if walking in another world when among the Joshua Trees, and I am forever grateful for the experience.
Here’s a photo from the trip:
*if you are curious about how these plants got their common name, some details can be found here.
**the artwork was done around the National Park stamp that was available at the visitors center for the Park (these are normally used to stamp a “passport” that some people (often young people) have so they can record the dates at which they visited different Parks). It was fitting to stamp my watercolour album and draw the tree around it.
© Christopher M Buddle 2023
Nature's Reverie 