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''Larrea tridentata'', called creosote bush and greasewood as a plant, chaparral as a medicinal herb, and ''gobernadora'' (
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
for "governess") in Mexico, due to its ability to secure more water by inhibiting the growth of nearby plants. In Sonora, it is more commonly called ''hediondilla''; Spanish ''hediondo'' = "smelly". It is a
flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...
in the family
Zygophyllaceae Zygophyllaceae is a family of flowering plants that contains the bean-caper and caltrop. The family includes around 285 species in 22 genera. Plants in the family Zygophyllaceae may be trees, shrubs, or herbs. They are often found in dry habit ...
. The specific name ''tridentata'' refers to its three-toothed leaves.


Distribution

''Larrea tridentata'' is a prominent species in the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan Deserts of western North America, and its range includes those and other regions in portions of southeastern
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
,
Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
, southern
Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...
, southwestern
Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...
,
New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ker ...
, and
Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
in the United States, and Chihuahua,
Sonora Sonora (), officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora ( en, Free and Sovereign State of Sonora), is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the Administrative divisions of Mexico, Federal Entities of Mexico. The state is d ...
,
Coahuila Coahuila (), formally Coahuila de Zaragoza (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Coahuila de Zaragoza ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Coahuila de Zaragoza), is one of the 32 states of Mexico. Coahuila borders the Mexican states of N ...
,
Nuevo León Nuevo León () is a state in the northeast region of Mexico. The state was named after the New Kingdom of León, an administrative territory from the Viceroyalty of New Spain, itself was named after the historic Spanish Kingdom of León. With a ...
,
Zacatecas , image_map = Zacatecas in Mexico (location map scheme).svg , map_caption = State of Zacatecas within Mexico , coordinates = , coor_pinpoint = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type ...
, Durango and San Luis Potosì in Mexico. The species grows as far east as
Zapata County, Texas Zapata County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 13,889. Its county seat is Zapata. The county is named for Colonel José Antonio de Zapata, a rancher in the area who rebelled against Me ...
, along the
Rio Grande The Rio Grande ( and ), known in Mexico as the Río Bravo del Norte or simply the Río Bravo, is one of the principal rivers (along with the Colorado River) in the southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The length of the Rio G ...
southeast of Laredo near the
99th meridian west The meridian 99° west of Greenwich is a line of longitude that extends from the North Pole across the Arctic Ocean, North America, the Pacific Ocean, the Southern Ocean, and Antarctica to the South Pole. The 99th meridian west forms a great cir ...
.


Description

''Larrea tridentata'' is an
evergreen In botany, an evergreen is a plant which has foliage that remains green and functional through more than one growing season. This also pertains to plants that retain their foliage only in warm climates, and contrasts with deciduous plants, which ...
shrub A shrub (often also called a bush) is a small-to-medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees ...
growing to tall, rarely . The stems of the plant bear resinous, dark green
leaves A leaf (plural, : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant plant stem, stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", wh ...
with two opposite
lanceolate The following is a list of terms which are used to describe leaf morphology in the description and taxonomy of plants. Leaves may be simple (a single leaf blade or lamina) or compound (with several leaflets). The edge of the leaf may be regular o ...
leaflets joined at the base, with a deciduous
awn AWN may stand for: * Awn Access to Justice Network in Gaza Strip, Legal Aid Network operate in Gaza Strip, Palestine * Animation World Network, an online organization for animators * Avant Window Navigator, a dock-like bar that tracks open windows ...
between them, each leaflet long and broad. The flowers are up to in diameter, with five yellow petals. Galls may form by the activity of the creosote gall midge. The whole plant exhibits a characteristic odor of
creosote Creosote is a category of carbonaceous chemicals formed by the distillation of various tars and pyrolysis of plant-derived material, such as wood or fossil fuel. They are typically used as preservatives or antiseptics. Some creosote types were ...
, from which the common name derives. In the regions where it grows, its smell is often associated with the "smell of rain".


Ecology

These animals eat creosote bush: *Leaves: Of mammals, only the
jackrabbit Hares and jackrabbits are mammals belonging to the genus ''Lepus''. They are herbivores, and live solitarily or in pairs. They nest in slight depressions called forms, and their young are able to fend for themselves shortly after birth. The gen ...
, and only when it can find no other food, as the leaves are bitter;
Desert iguana The desert iguana (''Dipsosaurus dorsalis'') is an iguana species found in the Sonoran and Mojave Deserts of the Southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, as well as on several Gulf of California islands. Taxonomy The species was ...
s,Lemm, Jeffrey.(2006) Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of the San Diego Region (California Natural History Guides). University of California Press. and the
chuckwalla Chuckwallas are lizards found primarily in arid regions of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Some are found on coastal islands. The six species of chuckwallas are all placed within the genus ''Sauromalus''; they are part of th ...
. *Seeds: desert woodrats and
kangaroo rat Kangaroo rats, small mostly nocturnal rodents of genus ''Dipodomys'', are native to arid areas of western North America. The common name derives from their bipedal form. They hop in a manner similar to the much larger kangaroo, but developed t ...
s *Flowers: 22 species of bees, as pollinators, the
Chuckwalla Chuckwallas are lizards found primarily in arid regions of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Some are found on coastal islands. The six species of chuckwallas are all placed within the genus ''Sauromalus''; they are part of th ...
,
desert iguana The desert iguana (''Dipsosaurus dorsalis'') is an iguana species found in the Sonoran and Mojave Deserts of the Southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, as well as on several Gulf of California islands. Taxonomy The species was ...
s, etc *Many species of insect The
Arabian camel The dromedary (''Camelus dromedarius'' or ;), also known as the dromedary camel, Arabian camel, or one-humped camel, is a large even-toed ungulate, of the genus ''Camelus'', with one hump on its back. It is the tallest of the three species of ...
, brought to the area by the
United States Camel Corps The United States Camel Corps was a mid-19th-century experiment by the United States Army in using camels as pack animals in the Southwestern United States. Although the camels proved to be hardy and well suited to travel through the region, th ...
, readily ate creosote bush. It is thought that this meeting reestablished a biological relationship that was broken when the American camels became extinct in the
Quaternary Extinction Event The Quaternary period (from 2.588 ± 0.005 million years ago to the present) has seen the extinctions of numerous predominantly megafaunal species, which have resulted in a collapse in faunal density and diversity and the extinction of key ecolog ...
, making it an
evolutionary anachronism Evolutionary anachronism is a concept in evolutionary biology named by Connie C. Barlow in her book, ''The Ghosts of Evolution'' (2000). It refers to attributes of living species that are best explained as a result of having been favorably select ...
.


Oldest plants

As the creosote bush grows older, its oldest branches eventually die and its crown splits into separate crowns. This normally happens when the plant is 30 to 90 years old. Eventually, the old crown dies and the new one becomes a clonal colony from the previous plant, composed of many separate stem crowns all from the same seed.


King Clone

The "King Clone" creosote ring is one of the oldest living organisms on Earth. It has been alive an estimated 11,700 years, in the central Mojave Desert near present-day
Lucerne Valley, California Lucerne Valley is a census-designated place (CDP) and valley landform in the southern Mojave Desert, in western San Bernardino County, California. Geography The geographic valley is defined by the surrounding Granite Mountains, Ord Mountains, ...
. This single clonal colony plant of ''L. tridentata'' reaches up to in diameter, with an average diameter of . King Clone was identified and its age estimated by Frank Vasek, a professor at the
University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban distr ...
. Measurements of the plant, as well as
radiocarbon dating Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was dev ...
of wood fragments, were used to determine the plant's mean annual growth rate outward from the center of the ring. By measuring the diameter of the ring, its total age could be estimated. It is within the
Creosote Rings Preserve Creosote is a category of carbonaceous chemicals formed by the distillation of various tars and pyrolysis of plant-derived material, such as wood or fossil fuel. They are typically used as preservatives or antiseptics. Some creosote types were ...
of the Lucerne Valley and Johnson Valley.


Habitat

Creosote bush is most common on the well-drained soils of
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 semiarid climates, but a ...
s and flats. In parts of its range, it may cover large areas in practically pure stands, though it usually occurs in association with ''
Ambrosia dumosa ''Ambrosia dumosa'', the burro-weed or white bursage, a North American species of plants in the family Asteraceae. It is a common constituent of the creosote-bush scrub community throughout the Mojave desert of California, Nevada, and Utah and ...
'' (burro bush or bur-sage). Chemicals found in creosote bush roots have been shown to inhibit the growth of burro bush roots, but as of 2013, much of their relationship remains unexplained. Creosote bush stands tend to display an evenly spaced distribution of plants. Originally, it was assumed that the plant produced a
water-soluble In chemistry, solubility is the ability of a substance, the solute, to form a solution with another substance, the solvent. Insolubility is the opposite property, the inability of the solute to form such a solution. The extent of the solub ...
inhibitor that prevented the growth of other bushes near mature, healthy bushes. Now, however, it has been shown that the root systems of mature creosote plants are simply so efficient at absorbing water that fallen seeds nearby cannot accumulate enough water to germinate, effectively creating dead zones around every plant.


Desert adaptation

Owing to the harshness of the germination environment above mature root systems, young creosote bushes are much more susceptible to drought stress than established plants. Germination is quite active during wet periods, but most of the young plants die very quickly unless water conditions are optimal. Ground heat compounds the young plants' susceptibility to water stress, and ground temperatures can reach upwards of 70 °C (160 °F). To become established, the young plant apparently must experience three to five years of abnormally cool and moist weather during and after germination. From this, it can be inferred that all the plants inside a stand are of equal age. Mature plants, however, can tolerate extreme drought stress. In terms of negative
water potential Water potential is the potential energy of water per unit volume relative to pure water in reference conditions. Water potential quantifies the tendency of water to move from one area to another due to osmosis, gravity, mechanical pressure and mat ...
, creosote bushes can operate fully at -50 bars of water potential and have been found living down to -120 bars, although the practical average floor is around -70 bars, where the plant's need for cellular respiration generally exceeds the level that the water-requiring process of photosynthesis can provide. Cell division can occur during these times of water stress, and new cells commonly quickly absorb water after rainfall. This rapid uptake causes branches to grow several centimeters at the end of a wet season. Water loss is reduced by the resinous waxy coating of the leaves, and by their small size, which prevents them from heating above air temperature (which would increase the vapor pressure deficit between the leaf and the air, thus increasing water loss). Plants drop some leaves heading into summer, but if all leaves are lost, the plant will not recover. Accumulation of fallen leaves, as well as other detritus caught from the passing wind, creates an ecological community specific to the creosote bush canopy, including
beetle Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 describ ...
s,
millipede Millipedes are a group of arthropods that are characterised by having two pairs of jointed legs on most body segments; they are known scientifically as the class Diplopoda, the name derived from this feature. Each double-legged segment is a resu ...
s, pocket mice, and
kangaroo rat Kangaroo rats, small mostly nocturnal rodents of genus ''Dipodomys'', are native to arid areas of western North America. The common name derives from their bipedal form. They hop in a manner similar to the much larger kangaroo, but developed t ...
s.


Uses


Native American medicinals

Native Americans in the Southwest held beliefs that it treated many maladies, including
sexually transmitted disease Sexually transmitted infections (STIs), also referred to as sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and the older term venereal diseases, are infections that are spread by sexual activity, especially vaginal intercourse, anal sex, and oral ...
s,
tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
,
chicken pox Chickenpox, also known as varicella, is a highly contagious disease caused by the initial infection with varicella zoster virus (VZV). The disease results in a characteristic skin rash that forms small, itchy blisters, which eventually scab ...
,
dysmenorrhea Dysmenorrhea, also known as period pain, painful periods or menstrual cramps, is pain during menstruation. Its usual onset occurs around the time that menstruation begins. Symptoms typically last less than three days. The pain is usually in the ...
, and
snakebite A snakebite is an injury caused by the bite of a snake, especially a venomous snake. A common sign of a bite from a venomous snake is the presence of two puncture wounds from the animal's fangs. Sometimes venom injection from the bite may occu ...
. The
Coahuilla The Cahuilla , also known as ʔívil̃uqaletem or Ivilyuqaletem, are a Native American people of the various tribes of the Cahuilla Nation, living in the inland areas of southern California.Pima Pima or PIMA may refer to: People * Pima people, the Akimel O'odham, Indigenous peoples in Arizona (U.S.) and Sonora (Mexico) Places * Pima, Arizona, a town in Graham County * Pima County, Arizona * Pima Canyon, in the Santa Catalina Mountains ...
drank a decoction of the leaves as an
emetic Vomiting (also known as emesis and throwing up) is the involuntary, forceful expulsion of the contents of one's stomach through the mouth and sometimes the nose. Vomiting can be the result of ailments like food poisoning, gastroenteri ...
, and applied the boiled leaves as poultices to wounds or sores. Tohono O'odham Indians prepared it medicinally for stiff limbs, snake bites, and menstrual cramps. The shrub is still widely used as an herbal medicine in Mexico. In other uses, the reddish-colored lac that exudes from the plant was used by the Papago Indians, after boiling, to make a mending glue on broken pottery.


Herbal supplements and toxicity

''Larrea tridentata'' is often referred to as ''chaparral'' when used as a
herbal remedy Herbal medicine (also herbalism) is the study of pharmacognosy and the use of medicinal plants, which are a basis of traditional medicine. With worldwide research into pharmacology, some herbal medicines have been translated into modern remedies ...
and supplement; however, it does not grow in the synonymous
plant community A plant community is a collection or association of plant species within a designated geographical unit, which forms a relatively uniform patch, distinguishable from neighboring patches of different vegetation types. The components of each plant ...
chaparral Chaparral ( ) is a shrubland plant community and geographical feature found primarily in the U.S. state of California, in southern Oregon, and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. It is shaped by a Mediterranean c ...
. The
United States Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a federal agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the control and supervision of food s ...
has issued warnings about the health hazards of ingesting ''chaparral'' or using it as an internal medicine, and discourages its use. In 2005, Health Canada issued a warning to consumers to avoid using the leaves of ''Larrea'' species because of the risk of damage to the liver and kidneys.
Cancer Research UK Cancer Research UK (CRUK) is the world's largest independent cancer research organization. It is registered as a charity in the United Kingdom and Isle of Man, and was formed on 4 February 2002 by the merger of The Cancer Research Campaign and t ...
states: "We don't recommend that you take chaparral to treat or prevent any type of cancer."


See also

*
Jurupa Oak The Jurupa Oak, or Hurungna Oak, is a clonal colony of '' Quercus palmeri'' (Palmer's oak) trees in the Jurupa Mountains in Crestmore Heights, Riverside County, California. The colony has survived an estimated 13,000 years through clonal reproduc ...
*
List of longest-living organisms This is a list of the longest-living biological organisms: the individual(s) (or in some instances, clones) of a species with the longest natural maximum lifespans. For a given species, such a designation may include: # The oldest known individ ...


References


External links

* * * * * :''photo links'' * * * {{Taxonbar, from=Q965954 tridentata North American desert flora Flora of Northwestern Mexico Flora of the Southwestern United States Flora of the California desert regions Flora of the Chihuahuan Desert Flora of the Coachella Valley Flora of the Sonoran Deserts Flora of Arizona Flora of Nevada Flora of New Mexico Flora of Sonora Flora of Texas Flora of Utah Natural history of the Colorado Desert Natural history of the Mojave Desert Plants used in traditional Native American medicine Flora without expected TNC conservation status