how do desert plants find ingenious ways of adapting?
921352
They store water inside the shoots,they also have small leaves so they conserve moisture.
775801
Plants survive by adapting to the environment.  If the local fauna is eating the plant, the plant will develop a toxicity to ward off such animals form dining on the plant or the plant will reproduce in such numbers that a bite here and there doesn't matter.\n\nThe trick comes in when the animal develops a bond with a particular plant and adapts to the toxicity and uses this plant toxin to form its own shield against its predators--such as Monarch Butterflies and Milk weed or Gulf fliterary butterflies and the corky stemed passion flower.
411140
I have a Texas ranch style house with stone tile floors. Cacti and succulents, especially very large ones, and very small ones, can make a wonderful presentation.  A large old jade plant can be very nice center-piece in a sun room. Milkbush, several feet tall, can add an airy calmness to a patio entrance. Pick interesting forms. A few dolichothele, echinocereus, rebutia, desert cacti in a miniature assortment or by themselves also can add that "quaint" and scarse quality of a walk through a desert. (There is nothing. Then you see something.)\n\nThey are very easy to grow. Have fun.
352852
ther are a few desert animals that can do that, but humans can not, we need water to digest the food we eat, you will die of thirst.
742765
it's like sand dunes with limited plant growth
466356
I'm not sure about the Sahara specifically but in most deserts if you see a desert plant, such as a cactus, it generally indicates the presence of a small amount of hidden or trapped water underground. This is why no one in a desert would dig for water in a place that does not have a plant in it. It would be a waste of time. So it indicates the presence of water.
29324
Plants have small openings on the underside of their leaves called stomata. The roots pull in water and it travels up and out the stomata. The lower humidity outside the plant pulls the water out.
848342
Well you might start with reading about the scientific method.  There in you might find you need two study groups and likly several kinds of plants.  \nI would start with easily grown from seed plants.  Given identical stimuli except one group gets exposed to music.  Now a truly interested party would have several more groups and vary the added stimuli with various kinds of music.  eg. rock, punk, blues, opera, elevator type, etc....no doubt one might find that the added stimulis might alter the outcome in each of the test groups to get the added stimuli.  Too, one may find that certain plants behave differently to that added stimuli.  Might even vary it again by adding identcal plants alredy growing to each group.
128848
A few of many.\n\n1) Nocturnal habits. By minmising activity during the hottest parts of the day less water is lost to cooling, in addition to avoiding the high temperatures.\n\n\n2) Burrowing. Almost everysmall desert animals burrows> But many large animals also burrow in the desert. Things like warthogs, spotted dogs, wombats and hyaenas all burrow. Burrowing is a way of avoiding the sun. In addition the air temperature below the ground is always fairly constant, menaing it is cooler by day and warmer at night. The burrow also traps any moisture the animal breathes out or loses to sweating, slowing further loss.\n\n3) Seasonal activity. Most deserts have distinct wet and dry seasons. Many desert animals like shrimp or frogs will will hibernate in some form through the dry part of the year and only reemerge when it rains.\n\n4) Migration. Many desert animals are migratory or nomadic. This allows them to follow the available water and food. Animals like kangaroos, wildebeest, camels and bison are all nomadic or migratory in desert environments.\n\n5) Evolutionary adpation. This is a grab bag that covers all sorts of things. For exmaple many desert animls have highly efficient kidneys so they don't lose much water in urine. Camels have specially shaped blood cells that won't clog up their veins when their blod thickens as they dehydrate. Sidewinder snakes have evolved a method of moving over hot shadeless ground that minimises the amount of that they absorb. And so on.
768542
Broad leaves are a common feature in tropical or benign climates where  sunlight and water is plentifull.  Needles are a common feature in extreme climates be it because water is scarse, like in desertic, rocky regions where cactus are common or in places where there is ice and frost and weak sunlight  like Canada.  There are of course other additional adaptations to particular climates but that would be part of a different question.
658672
Desert doesn't mean that there is all sand, there are vegetation where oasis are.
829361
They can't know, just like we can't.  \n\nThey may be able to read cues and clues like we do, but they are not prognosticators.  \n\nGenerally plants and animals are adapted to the area they live in, and know how to prepare either from experience or even genetic cues.  Also, they always seem to prepare for the worst.  I've seen trees in warm California lose there leaves because they thought winter was coming.  It was, but they could have easily grown through the mild winter.  They were a species adapted to a different climate.\n\nGood question.  It shows you're thinking about your world!
1000627
to have a good idea have a look at the article below. hoppe it helps... it's a bit long but will have what you need properly explained...\n\n\n\nPollination Adaptations\nFlowers need to be pollinated. Pollination is the process of moving the pollen grain from the anther of a stamen to the stigma of a carpel. There are a few flowers that can self-pollinate all on their own, but this limits them to inbreeding. Most species rely upon some kind of pollination vector to accomplish pollination. The vector can be any agent that can move pollen from anther to stigma. \n\nThere is evidence of water and wind as the pollination vector in certain species, but many species do not depend upon the random or downstream-only pollination pathways offered by these vectors. Indeed such vectors are only useful in situations where large populations of a very limited number of species are present. \n\nMost flowers have evolved to use a "smart bomb" or "magic bullet" vector...animals! These vectors have sensory organs to locate flowers, they have locomotion to get them to the flowers in spite of large spaces between individuals, and they have enough intelligence to remember that they can depend upon a reward if they visit one particular species repeatedly. \n\nAttracting the Pollinator\nIn order to effectively use an animal pollination vector, a flower needs to attract the animal for the first visit. This can be done in one of two ways: visual cues and olfactory cues. \n\nVisual Cues\nSome species use a color pattern known as a "bull's eye" to mark their position in the environment...to stand out against a background of green foliage. Obviously not too many animal-pollinated flowers are leaf-green! \n\na black-eyed susan...recall that there are over 100 species of unrelated black-eyed susans...one of the problems of common names. This one is in the genus, Rudbeckia. Notice its obvious bull's eye target appearance. The bull's eye is black and the yellow ring surrounds it to make it quite noticeable. \n\n\nThe daylily (Hemerocallis) also shows a prominent bull's eye, but notice how the color pattern is reversed. The bull's eye is light in color and the ring around it is very dark. The effect is the same however, the flower is going to be obvious to a potential pollinator flying overhead. \n\n\nIt is important that whatever color pattern is used is within the visible range of colors observable by the pollinator. Colors obvious to one animal may be invisible to another. Gaillardia (painted daisy). This species obviously uses a yellow bull's eye with surrounding red and yellow rings. One gets the appearance of a dartboard just looking at it. The pollinator visiting is butterflies. Butterflies definitely are attracted to red/yellow patterns, and they need the large landing platform provided by this wide flower. \n\n\nOn the other hand, Gaillardia does not limit its pollination to just butterflies. An afternoon of observation will tell you that even more visits are made by honeybees! Bees have no ability to perceive red colors, so how does that red/yellow pattern look to a bee? This requires some mental translation and some special photography for a human to appreciate what a bee might observe. \n\nFirst we need to eliminate red from the image. This can only be accomplished with fancy video work or black-and-white photography.\n\n\nBee vision does not include red, but it does extend into the ultraviolet. In other words, bees see colors that are invisible to us! Our film is not very sensitive to ultraviolet because it has been developed for showing images visible to humans. To correct that and see the ultraviolet patterns in these flowers, we need to use yet another filter. This filter blocks visible light and allows ultraviolet light to expose the film. Below is the ultraviolet image of the same two daisies taken seconds later with both filters in place: \n\n\ncenter of each daisy is totally absorbin
129122
There is no answer to this question.\n\nNot all  living organisms adapt under environemental stress. We can see this simply by looking at widespread organisms like leopards. Despite living everywhere from tropical deserts to rainforest to temperate alpine tundra they remain completely indistinguishable form one another. Although a desert leopard suffers from serious environmental stress in terms of water and prey availability and a mountain leopard suffers from cold and a forest leopard suffers from fungal diseases and so forth the organisms don't adapt at all. It is a generalist species and it remains a generalist with no specific adpations to environmental stress.\n\nWe can even prove experiementally that not all species dapat to environmental stress. Simply grow a perti dish fill of different species of bacteria and let it dry out. As the water stress increases most organisms will either die or become dormant. There is no evidence whatsoever of adaptation over any time scale.\n\nSimilarly not all porganisms will flee. Most will simply die, hibernate or scrape through.\n\n\nWhat a dumb question.
642763
Usually, plants take nutrients from the soil and air and use it for fuel for their growth. Animals tap into this cycle by eating plants during this process. A plant species doesn't want to die, so it adapts to make itself harder to eat (thorny, poisonous, hard bark, etc.) and maybe also to take advantage of animal behavior to propogate itself (fruits, nuts, etc.). Animals who can't get easy plant food any more need to adapt too (resistance to poison), and may begin working with the plant to propogate their food source in return for an easy and sometimes exclusive snack or shelter (hummingbirds, etc.). Rarely, plants adapt to the presence of animal food as a booster source of nutrients, especially in nutrient-poor soil (venus fly traps, etc.). Sometimes, plants and animals come to work in such close cooperation that neither would easily survive without the other (honeybees and flowers).\n\nAdaption and evolution is the best way to describe the interactions between plants and animals in a systematic sense.
589024
to have a good idea have a look at the article below. hoppe it helps...\n\n\n\nPollination Adaptations\nFlowers need to be pollinated. Pollination is the process of moving the pollen grain from the anther of a stamen to the stigma of a carpel. There are a few flowers that can self-pollinate all on their own, but this limits them to inbreeding. Most species rely upon some kind of pollination vector to accomplish pollination. The vector can be any agent that can move pollen from anther to stigma. \n\nThere is evidence of water and wind as the pollination vector in certain species, but many species do not depend upon the random or downstream-only pollination pathways offered by these vectors. Indeed such vectors are only useful in situations where large populations of a very limited number of species are present. \n\nMost flowers have evolved to use a "smart bomb" or "magic bullet" vector...animals! These vectors have sensory organs to locate flowers, they have locomotion to get them to the flowers in spite of large spaces between individuals, and they have enough intelligence to remember that they can depend upon a reward if they visit one particular species repeatedly. \n\nAttracting the Pollinator\nIn order to effectively use an animal pollination vector, a flower needs to attract the animal for the first visit. This can be done in one of two ways: visual cues and olfactory cues. \n\nVisual Cues\nSome species use a color pattern known as a "bull's eye" to mark their position in the environment...to stand out against a background of green foliage. Obviously not too many animal-pollinated flowers are leaf-green! \n\na black-eyed susan...recall that there are over 100 species of unrelated black-eyed susans...one of the problems of common names. This one is in the genus, Rudbeckia. Notice its obvious bull's eye target appearance. The bull's eye is black and the yellow ring surrounds it to make it quite noticeable. \n\n\nThe daylily (Hemerocallis) also shows a prominent bull's eye, but notice how the color pattern is reversed. The bull's eye is light in color and the ring around it is very dark. The effect is the same however, the flower is going to be obvious to a potential pollinator flying overhead. \n\n\nIt is important that whatever color pattern is used is within the visible range of colors observable by the pollinator. Colors obvious to one animal may be invisible to another. Gaillardia (painted daisy). This species obviously uses a yellow bull's eye with surrounding red and yellow rings. One gets the appearance of a dartboard just looking at it. The pollinator visiting is butterflies. Butterflies definitely are attracted to red/yellow patterns, and they need the large landing platform provided by this wide flower. \n\n\nOn the other hand, Gaillardia does not limit its pollination to just butterflies. An afternoon of observation will tell you that even more visits are made by honeybees! Bees have no ability to perceive red colors, so how does that red/yellow pattern look to a bee? This requires some mental translation and some special photography for a human to appreciate what a bee might observe. \n\nFirst we need to eliminate red from the image. This can only be accomplished with fancy video work or black-and-white photography.\n\n\nBee vision does not include red, but it does extend into the ultraviolet. In other words, bees see colors that are invisible to us! Our film is not very sensitive to ultraviolet because it has been developed for showing images visible to humans. To correct that and see the ultraviolet patterns in these flowers, we need to use yet another filter. This filter blocks visible light and allows ultraviolet light to expose the film. Below is the ultraviolet image of the same two daisies taken seconds later with both filters in place: \n\n\ncenter of each daisy is totally absorbing the UV light. The petals around the perimeter are reflecting the UV
834603
what kind of plant is it ? some do.