Sandfood facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Sandfood |
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| Conservation status | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Genus: |
Pholisma
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| Species: |
sonorae
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Pholisma sonorae, commonly known as sandfood, is a very special and rare flowering plant. It lives only in the Sonoran Desert in places like California and Arizona, and south into Mexico. It's quite unusual because it grows mostly underground!
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About Sandfood
Sandfood is a type of plant called a perennial herb. This means it lives for more than two years. It grows in sand dunes, which are big piles of sand shaped by the wind.
What Does It Look Like?
Most of the sandfood plant, including its thick stem, grows up to two meters (about six feet) deep under the sand. Only a small, rounded or oval part of the plant pops out above the surface. If enough sand blows away, the top of the stem might look a bit like a mushroom.
How Does It Get Food?
Sandfood is a parasitic plant. This means it gets its food and nutrients by attaching to the roots of other desert plants. It connects to shrubs like wild buckwheats, ragweeds, and Tiquilia plicata.
Unlike most plants, sandfood does not have chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is the green stuff that helps plants make their own food using sunlight. Because sandfood doesn't have chlorophyll, it's a heterotroph. This means it gets its food from other living things, just like animals do. Sandfood is usually grayish, whitish, or brown, not green.
Even though it gets nutrients from other plants, sandfood gets its water in a different way. It has tiny openings called stomata on its scale-like leaves. These stomata help the plant take in water from the air.
Sandfood Flowers
Sandfood plants have small flowers, about one centimeter wide. These flowers can be pink or purple, and they often have white edges.
Sandfood and People
For a long time, sandfood was an important food for some Native American groups living in the desert. This includes the Cocopah and the Hia C-ed O'odham peoples.
Why Sandfood is Rare
Sandfood is a rare plant today. Its home, the shifting sand dunes, has been shrinking. This is because of new buildings and other developments in the desert areas where it lives.
