分享一下沙漠里其他植物。
Lithops(石生花属)
Some are small and low and barely distinguishable from their surroundings. These look like little pebbles. They resemble them so closely that animals which might be only too glad to steal their water just pass them by. When rains does fall, they absorb it and quickly expand, but even this does not spoil their disguise, they just look like larger pebbles.
When the time comes to reproduce, the stone plant abandon its disguise.
It blooms. The flowers open and close every 24 hours. So, for a few dangerous days, the plant advertises its pollinators before returning to like as a pebble.
Stapelia (毛犀角)
It produces what is perhaps the deserts strangest disguise. It uses water stored in its stems to grow buds the size of tennis balls.
The flower, once opened, it called a desert starfish. Instead of releasing millions of loose pollen grains as most flowers do, the desert starfish produces them packed in five tiny sacks. But if its strategy is successful, just one of them will produce hundreds of seeds.
还有一些其他的沙漠植物,为了在贫瘠的沙漠活下去,都有自己不同的策略。
The creosote bush(三齿团香木)
It grows extremely slowly and few plants grow more slowly than this one. It is inactive for most of its life, and only wakes up and grows for a brief period if and when there is a fall of rain. Its ability to endure is truly extraordinary.
The resurrection plant (鳞叶卷柏/还魂草)
It spends much of its life looking dead. It can survive like this for a decade.
It's kind of moss. It barely has roots and it certainly can't store much water, but it can travel. After a particularly long drought, it breaks away from its roots and becomes a tumbleweed. Moving across the desert, it can travel a mile in a week. With luck, it may find water.
Just a shower of rain can bring it back to life. And it fronds soak up the water, they unfurl. In its protected center, it still have green cells which absorb both the water and sunlight and rapidly produce the food it needs to resume its growth.
It will grow for just as long as there is moisture, but when that disappears, it closes up once more and resumes its travels.
Coyote tobacco (郊狼烟草)
In just a few weeks, it grows a meter tall and produces dozens of flowers. The night air becomes heavy with their fragrance.
最后的最后,是生命的延续。
The wind - An excellent agent for seeds to be distributed as wildly as possible.
Countless millions of seeds are swept up into the air. Some seeds can travel thousands of miles on the wind, so that plants may eventually reach even the most isolated desert.
想起圆桌派里讲到的一句话:这个地球之所以美丽,是因为它没有放弃每一种色彩。我想大自然之所以繁盛,是因为它没有辜负每一颗种子。
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