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Lycium pallidum
Also called Pale Desertthorn, Pale Wolfberry
Pale desert-thorn is a spiny, dense desert shrub of the nightshade family, native to the southwestern US and northern Mexico, growing 1–3 m tall and often forming thickets. It is tough and drought-tolerant, and is best suited to dry, open sites rather than typical garden beds.
Lycium pallidum is a species of flowering plant in the nightshade family, Solanaceae. It is sometimes referred to by the common names pale wolfberry and pale desert-thorn. It is native to northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. In Mexico it can be found in Sonora, Chihuahua, Zacatecas, and San Luis Potosi. In the United States it occurs in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah.
This plant grows in many types of desert habitat. It occurs in pinyon-juniper woodland, sagebrush, shrubsteppe, savanna, and other ecosystems. It can grow in high-salinity soils. It is characteristic of the flora of the Mojave Desert, and it also occurs in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts. In the Mojave Desert it grows alongside plants such as winterfat (Krascheninnikovia lanata), Pima rhatany (Krameria erecta), spiny hopsage (Grayia spinosa), Shockley goldenhead (Acamptopappus shockleyi), Frémont's dalea (Psorothamnus fremontii), spiny menodora (Menodora spinescens), and species of ephedra, prickly pear, and yucca. In Arizona it grows in riparian habitat with sycamore (Platanus wrightii), willows (Salix spp.),
Native Americans utilized the plant for a number of medicinal and other purposes. The Navajo used it for toothache. They considered it a sacred plant and sacrificed it to the gods. Several groups used the fruit for food by eating it fresh, cooked, or dried, eating it mixed with clay, boiling it into a syrup, and making it into beverages. Among the Zuni people, the berries are eaten raw when perfectly ripe or boiled and sometimes sweetened. The ground leaves, twigs, and flowers were given to warriors for protection during war.
Matrimony vine · Baja desert-thorn · Chinese desert-thorn · European Matrimony Vine · Lycium humile · Desert-thorn
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Lycium pallidum by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
