UC Gardening Blogs

Tree & Shrub Insecticides Limited in New Law

As of January 1, 2025, popular lawn and garden pesticides belonging to the neonicotinoid...

UC Davis Distinguished Professor Walter Leal Used to Dislike Insects

Entomologist Marlin Rice, who interviews "living legends" for the American Entomologist, a...

UC distinguished professor Walter Leal is featured as a "living legend" in the winter issue of the American Entomologist. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

UC distinguished professor Walter Leal is featured as a "living legend" in the winter issue of the American Entomologist. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Walter Leal delivering a talk at the 2007 Entomological Society of America meeting in San Diego. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Walter Leal delivering a talk at the 2007 Entomological Society of America meeting in San Diego. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Come for the Joshua Trees...Stay for the Art!

Your “peripatetic blogger” has been in the desert for the last month enjoying all the beauty that the desert provides.  A favorite spot that keeps drawing us back is Joshua Tree National Park.  The stark beauty and vastness of the over 800,000 acres casts a mystical spell.  The granite monoliths and rare rock and boulder formations draw you into a primordial world that is truly a sweeping natural desert treasure.  And, as if the daytime vistas aren't enough, the park has recently been granted an International Dark Sky Park.  Thus, Joshua Tree also gives night visitors a dome of a dazzling star display to add to the wonder.

THE JOSHUA TREES

And then there are the Joshua Trees!

Joshua Trees are an integral part of the desert flora and of its namesake park.  Actually, it's not a tree at all!  This flowering plant is at home in elevations up to 6000 feet and primarily lives in the Mojave Desert.  They grow between ½ to 3 inches a year, have a diameter between 1 and 3 feet and grow to be between 15 and 40 feet tall.

They are definitely in the Dr. Seuss category of shapes and design.  To this choreographer and dancer, when they're in a group, they always look like the most amazing troupe of dancers about to move together in unison!  They are part of the Agave family, scientifically known as the Yucca brevifolia.  Joshua trees don't bloom every year…there must be enough water during the year and a winter freeze for them to bloom.  If you see one growing with branches straight up—it has never bloomed before. To catch them in bloom, check them out between February and April.

The yucca moth is a great pollinator for the Joshuas.  They lay their eggs in the flowers and when they hatch, they eat the seeds.  Pollination helps the Joshua tree produce oblong-shaped green or brown fruit.  Also, Joshua trees have a complex root system.  One Joshua tree can have hundreds of roots going down into the earth at varying depths. In this way, some trees clone themselves, which is the main way Joshua trees reproduce.  Of course, wind and animals spreading seeds also aid in reproduction.

And reproduce they do!  Just picture all of those trees grouped together, or singularly, greeting passersby at strict attention for eons. 

THE ART

Imagine our surprise to enter Joshua Tree National Park and find the incredible site of an “Outdoor Desert Museum of Assemblage Sculpture”.  That is the uncanny site for assemblage artist, Noah Purifoy, to create a high desert,  outdoor “studio” of 30 imposing found-object sculptures occupying ten acres of his high desert environment.  Such works as “Igloo”, “Three Witches”,  “Adrian's Little Theater”, “SF/Oakland Bay Bridge”, “The White House”, “Voting Booth”, “The Library of Congress” and “Aurora Borealis” are just some of the titles and works that pique the imagination and make one laugh, wonder and think.

Born in Alabama in 1917, assemblage artist Purifoy lived and worked most of his life in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree, California.  His earliest sculpture, constructed out of charred debris from the 1965 Watts riots, traveled throughout the world featured in many important exhibitions.  In 1989, he moved his practice of assemblage to Joshua Tree.  From then until his death in 2004, he created his assemblages and installations there, designed to reflect his life-long concerns and passions.  Today, the work is preserved by The Noah Purifoy Foundation.

One can only imagine that the sculpture-like Joshua trees also influenced his unique, critical eye and artistry.  So,…Come for the Joshua Trees and Stay for the Art…both make bold and lasting statements on the landscape and in one's mind.

photos by Lanie Keystone

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See Root-knot nematodes at the nematode collection in the Katherine Esau Sciece Hall during UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

See Root-knot nematodes at the nematode collection in the Katherine Esau Sciece Hall during UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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