THE VOICE OF THE DESERT 1 ^j. 



More than a montli ago all the little annual flowers and 

 weeds which spring up after the winter rains and rush 

 from seed to seed again in six weeks gave up the ghost at 

 the end of their short lives. Their hope of posterity hes now 

 invisible, either upon the surface of the bare ground or just 

 below it. Yet when the summer thunderstorms come in late 

 July or August, they will not make the mistake of germi- 

 nating. They are triggered to explode into life only when 

 they are both moist and cool — which they will not be until 

 next February or March when their season begins. Neither 

 the shrubs nor the trees seem to know that no rain has 

 fallen during the long months. The leathery, somewhat 

 resinous, leaves of the dominant shrub — the attractive 

 plant unattractively dubbed "creosote bush" — are not at 

 all parched or wilted. Neither are the deciduous leaves of 

 the mesquite. 



Not many months ago the creosote was covered with 

 bright yellow pealike flowers; the mesquite with pale yel- 

 low catkins. Now the former is heavy with gray seed and 

 on the mesquite are forming long pods which Indians once 

 ute and which cattle now find an unusually rich food. 



It looks almost as though the shrubs and trees could live 

 without water. But of course they cannot. Every desert 

 plant has its secret, though it is not always the same one. 

 In the case of the mesquite and the creosote it is that their 

 roots go deep and that, so the ecologists say, there is in the 

 desert no wet or dry season below six feet. What little 

 moisture is there is pretty constant through the seasons of 

 the year and through the dry years as well as the wet. 

 Like the temperature in some caves, it never varies. The 

 mesquite and creosote are not compelled to care whether 

 it has rained for four months or not. And unlike many 



