Pinyon
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D Pinyon [Pinus edulis]. Usually found growing with junipers in the pinyon-juniper woodland or pygmy forest. Under ideal conditions, pinyon may grow into quite respectable trees! The seeds are still used as a staple diet item by Southwestern Indians. As pinyon “nuts,” they also find their way into gourmet and specialty food shops. The inconspicuous flowers appear in spring and the cones mature a year and a half later, in the fall.
Mormon Tea
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C Mormon tea [Ephedra viridis]. Used by Indians and pioneers as a stimulant and medicine, the beverage is still used as a spring tonic by many.
Ephedra is really kind of a neat plant. Like most desert plants, it has evolved methods of conserving water. For one thing, it has no leaves. Look at it closely—it’s all stem. Plants can lose a lot of water from their leaves and many desert plants have leaves modified to reduce water loss, but Mormon tea has dispensed with leaves entirely (Well, almost entirely: they get very tiny ones in the spring, which soon fall off). Plants usually need green leaves to produce food, but Ephedra has many green stems that carry out that function.
Yucca
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B Yucca [Yucca brevifolia]. The yuccas are very common throughout the Southwest, from low desert to mountains. There are many species, but they share one great peculiarity. They are symbiotic with a little white moth, the Pronuba.