Most people imagine a desert as a waterless, very hot, windy place with a few signs of life. However, some deserts are just like that but others are quite different. There are deserts that get no rain at all and others where it may rain ten times a year. Most deserts of the world have high daytime temperatures, but some are in fact cold deserts. The harsh look of a desert is quite misleading. People usually think that nothing could live on such an environment, when in fact, there is an amazing variety of wildlife and plants that have evolved adaptations that enable them to survive there. The large deserts of the world are located in Australia, Antarctica, Mexico, Iraq and more. They are located there because by the equator, being near the sun the hot air raises during the day but, in the night the levels drop down.
Plants adapt to desert conditions by being able to store water. Plants store water in their roots, stems and leaves. Desert plants have developed three main adaptive strategies: succulence, drought enduring plants and drought evading plants. Each of these is a different effective collection of adaptations for growing under conditions that would kill plants from other areas. Succulent plants store water in fleshy leaves, stems or roots, an example of a succulent plant is a cactus. Cacti can live in the desert because; inside of the cactus there is a water system which stores 8000 litres of water after rain. The roots are very long so they go deep into the ground to get water. Also, the drought enduring plants mostly grow outwards slowly from the original bush and an example of one is a desert holly and the drought evading plants mostly germinate quickly after heavy rain like the desert flowers. The desert flowers bloom and