Creosote bush scrub is a North American desert
vegetation type (or
biome
A biome () is a distinct geographical region with specific climate, vegetation, and animal life. It consists of a biological community that has formed in response to its physical environment and regional climate. In 1935, Tansley added the ...
) of sparsely but evenly spaced desert plants dominated by creosote bush (''
Larrea tridentata
''Larrea tridentata'', called creosote bush, greasewood, and chaparral is a medicinal herb. In Sonora, it is more commonly called ''hediondilla''; Spanish ''hediondo'' = "smelly". It is a flowering plant in the family Zygophyllaceae. The specific ...
'') and its associates. Its visual characterization is of widely spaced shrubs that are somewhat evenly distributed over flat or relatively flat desert areas that receive between 2 and 8 inches of rain each year. It covers the majority of the flat desert floor and relatively flat
alluvial fan
An alluvial fan is an accumulation of sediments that fans outwards from a concentrated source of sediments, such as a narrow canyon emerging from an escarpment. They are characteristic of mountainous terrain in arid to Semi-arid climate, semiar ...
s in the
Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert (; ; ) is a desert in the rain shadow of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the Southwestern United States. Named for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous Mohave people, it is located pr ...
,
Chihuahuan Desert, and
Sonoran Desert. The dominant plants that typify this vegetation type are creosote bush (''
Larrea tridentata
''Larrea tridentata'', called creosote bush, greasewood, and chaparral is a medicinal herb. In Sonora, it is more commonly called ''hediondilla''; Spanish ''hediondo'' = "smelly". It is a flowering plant in the family Zygophyllaceae. The specific ...
'') and its associates, white bur-sage (''
Ambrosia dumosa''), brittlebush (''
Encelia farinosa'', ''
Encelia actoni'', ''
Encelia virginensis''), cheese-bush (''
Ambrosia salsola''), Mojave yucca (''
Yucca schidigera''), silver cholla cactus (''
Cylindropuntia echinocarpa''), and beavertail cactus (''
Opuntia basilaris''). Creosote bush has a wider range than its associates, so codominant shrubs, which are associated with more narrow ranges, will vary from region to region.
References
*
Deserts and xeric shrublands
Flora of the Southwestern United States
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