Video
Desert Plants
Transcript
Hi I'm Ranger Sofia and I'm here in Zion National Park off of the Pa'rus trail. Behind me you can see the Towers and Temples of the Virgin along with the West Temple as the sun just hits them this morning. Today I'm going to be talking to you about the ingenious tricks that Zion's plants use to adapt to this harsh desert environment. As you look around me you'll notice that I have lots of dry grasses I have lots of shrubs and smaller trees and from that you can tell that Zion is in a desert. That means that we get very little rain or moisture here in fact down this lower elevation of Zion National Park we get only about 14 inches of rain per year and the temperatures can rise above 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. That means it's a very hard place to live. Everything that lives in the desert must adapt to both the heat and the dryness here including us humans. Now I want you to imagine that you are going on an adventure in the desert. What would you pack with you? How would you adapt to both this heat and the dryness? If you're watching this video with a friend I encourage you to press pause and share your ideas with each other. As humans we have many ways we can adapt to the desert heat and dryness. First of all we can bring around along a water bottle like this purple one I have here. We can put on sunscreen like the sunscreen that I'm putting on my arms in this moment and we can make sure to only hike in the morning and in the evening to avoid the worst of the heat. This protects us from dehydration, sunburn, and heat illness. Desert plants use many other behaviors and structures to protect themselves from this harsh desert environment. Today I'm going to be talking about two desert plants that live here in Zion National Park. The prickly pear cactus and the four wing salt bush. Now I'm here kneeling next to a prickly pear cactus behind me you can still see those western walls of Zion Canyon. As you can see here it has these green paddles covered in spines and ouch! They're quite sharp. This plant in the springtime as you can see in this picture I'm holding has beautiful colorful flowers. In the picture it has a nice yellow one .In the fall, usually around this time of year, the cactus develops these magenta fruit which you can see in this picture here and this is very a very popular snack amongst both animals and humans. During the rare times of year when we actually get rained here in Zion National Park the prickly pear cactus uses its shallow root system, which you can see in the picture I'm holding here, these very thin small roots are right under the surface of the ground and it uses those to actually soak up that little bit of rain water which it stores inside of these green pads kind of like a water bottle for the plant to use later. Then these spines that you can see here actually protect the paddle from the thirsty animals who might want to come along and take a bite of it. Just for your knowledge though if you did take a bite of one of these paddles which are in fact edible it would kind of taste like biting into a juicy but very bland apple. Now we're here in front of the small woody shrub which is our second plant, the four wing salt bush. Behind me you can see the eastern walls of Zion Canyon now if you look at this plant you'll notice that it has sage green leaves and then kind of these clusters or clumps that look like flowers but are actually seed pods. So I'm going to grab one that we can look at a little bit more closely so if you look at this you'll notice that it actually has four parts, or four wings, and that's actually how this got its name the four-wing salt bush. Another adaptation that this plant has is that in the desert we often actually have a little bit of salt in both the water and the soil which is quite harmful for most plants. So this plant can actually push that salt to the surface of its leaves into these very fine little hairs where the salt forms crystals and these crystals actually deflect the harsh desert sun. Did you know that plants can get sunburned just like us humans? So I'm going to grab one of these leaves and we're going to look more closely at it if you look at it you'll notice that it actually has this kind of white shimmering sheen to it and those are the salt crystals which actually act like a sunscreen for the plant just like the sunscreen I put on earlier. Zion's plants are expert desert survivalists. Without the adaptations that they have to both the heat the dryness and the saltiness here, Zion Canyon would be a much more barren place than it is today. Well I hope that one day you come to visit us here in Zion National Park and if you do please remember to pack your water bottle like the prickly pear cactus put on your sunscreen like the four wing salt bush and take a walk on the Pa'rus trail where you can admire these amazing plants that can actually thrive in this really harsh environment. Thanks for joining me today!
Description
Join Ranger Sofia to learn all about the ingenious ways that Zion's plants have adapted to live in a desert environment. This presentation was created for students in grades 4th, 5th, and 6th, but can be enjoyed by all. Standards addressed: NGSS: 4-LS1-1
Duration
5 minutes, 30 seconds
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