desert plants - sneaky quick water hoarders

Desert plants have a variety of adaptations allowing them to survive long periods without water.

Some plants only open their stomata at night to reduce water evaporation that occurs quicker when the sun is out.

Plants often have water impervious cuticles & waxy coatings.

Succulent organs retain lots of water.

South African desert covered in ephemeral annuals during brief spring wet season.

There are even ephemeral annuals that bloom only during sudden rain.

The Peniocereus Greggi blooms once a year. All plants of that type bloom simultaneously on the same night. This occurs to maximize cross pollination between plants. If they bloomed individually, there would be no one to cross pollinate with. In other parts of the world, flowers stay open for a while to give cross pollination time. But in the desert this plant doesn't want to waste energy maintaining a flower and keeping the reproductive process ongoing for long periods of time. They just get it done one night then go back to staying alive.

Apparently some people have night garden parties where they watch it bloom.

celery. Myrmidons love it.

I think celery is the first food I've encountered in Britannica. Is celery interesting? Actually, practically everything is interesting when you dig a little deeper.

When I started reading about trees that are native to North America, I found it surprising that half the trees in my yard are actually non-native trees. That makes identification harder because all the identification books I have are North America specific. None of them mention Italian Cypress trees or Avocado trees.

The same goes for food I get at the grocery store. Where did these foods first come from? Britannica says celery is "native to the Mediterranean area". Wikipedia says the first references to celery are found in 1323 BC, although there is no evidence that it was cultivated until hundreds of years later.

Homer's Iliad mentions that the horses of the Myrmidons grazed on wild celery in the marshes of Troy. (Apparently Troy was an actual real place which is now northwest Anatolia in modern Turkey.) If I was a vegetable, I'd be super stoked to be mentioned in the Iliad.

Be prepared. The following shocked me to the core:

Celery is NOT a negative calorie food! It does NOT take more calories to digest it than it provides to the body. Seriously, the web is awful at providing information about food and health. It's just absolute garbage at both those things. If you hear a fact about food on the web outside of an encyclopedia, just believe the opposite and you will probably be right. In fact, I'm not even sure that there are any true facts about food. Be skeptical!