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Pholisma arenarium
Also called Desert Dune Food, Desert Sand Plant, Dune Food
Pholisma arenarium is a leafless, fleshy parasitic perennial that grows underground and on the roots of desert and dune shrubs, so it cannot be grown as an ordinary garden plant. Its key requirement is a living host shrub in sandy, well-drained ground.
Pholisma arenarium is a species of flowering plant in the family Lennoaceae. It is known by several common names, including desert Christmas tree, scaly-stemmed sand plant, and purple sand food. As the name implies, the loaf-like part of the root is edible. It is native to northwestern Mexico, Arizona and southern California, where it grows in many habitat types, including desert, chaparral, and sandy coastal dunes. It is a fleshy perennial herb taking a compact cylindrical or ovate shape up to 20 or 30 centimeters tall above ground, often with part of the stem below the sandy surface. It is a parasitic plant growing on the roots or of various shrubs such as burrobush, Yerba Santa, California croton, rabbitbrush, and ragweeds. As a heterotroph which derives its nutrients from other plants, it lacks chlorophyll and is brownish-gray or whitish in color.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Pholisma arenarium 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.
