Shrubs Of The Great Basin: A Natural History

Desert Peach

Desert Peach Prunus andersonii Another shrub among sagebrush, antelope brush, and rabbit brush, particularly near Reno, is the wild peach, whose pink flowers make the roadsides flame.-Anonymous, NEVADA, A GUIDE TO THE SILVER STATE WHILE IT IS somewhat hyperbolic to characterize our desert peach as capable of producing flaming roadsides, it is, without question, one of the most beautiful and probably the most underappreciated shrubs in the western Great Basin. It has also been called the desert wild almond, although one rarely hears that name now. The deep to light rose-colored or, rarely, white flowers are only 12 to 22 millimeters in diameter, but they occur in such masses that the shrubs for one or two weeks in any locale appear to be covered with a pink carpet. Typically, the desert peach is a rigid, intricately branched shrub a meter or less in height, although it may on occasion become 2 meters high. The leaves, which appear in April or May at the same time as the flowers, are narrow and pointed and up to 2.5 centimeters long, being grouped in clusters on short, lateral branchlets. Each of the smaller branchlets ends in a spine, giving rise to the characteristic thorny aspect. The fruit, which develops within a few weeks after flowering, resembles a small, fuzzy peach between 10 and 18 millimeters long, but unfortunately only a thin, inedible pulp surrounds the pit. Apparently the Paiutes made some use of the plant itself, for the leaves and twigs were -boiled to prepare a tea considered efficacious in the treatment of colds and rheumatism. Our closely related western chokecherry was used by them in the same manner. The desert peach, although common in the extreme western Great Basin, 168 DESERT PEACH has a relatively restricted distribution, confined largely to the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada in California and Nevada. Its range extends from extreme northeastern California to Kern County in the south, then east through western Nevada to Churchill County. "Desert" peach is a mis~ nomer, since this shrub is more at home in the steppe climate favored by the sagebrush. It is particularly common in the Reno-Carson City area. Even though it may be found on relatively dry slopes, it is not really capable of withstanding the very arid and saline environment of the desert. B. L Kay,]. A. Young, C. M. Ross, and W. L Graves have studied the growth requirements of the desert peach in some detaiL Apparently it does better and is most common on soils derived from decomposing granite. They found that it generally occurs as largt; clones, with individual plants being connected by underground stems-a single clone may cover several acres. Kay and his coworkers counted the annual rings in the stems of large clones and found none older than eight years. The clones themselves must be very much older, of course, but individual stems apparently are relatively short~lived. Frank Vasek recently studied clones of the creosote bush at several sites in the Mohave Desert of California and found that the largest clone, with a diameter of 15 meters, approached an age of 11,700 years! Individual seed~ ling stems of creosote bush varied in age from 19 to about 60 years. The larger stems split radially into segments which eventually gave rise to sepa~ rate plants and to the resultant clones. Obviously, the bristlecone pine is not the oldest living thing after all! This is not to say, of course, that the clones of the desert peach are as old as those of the creosote bush, but who knows? Interestingly enough, individual clones of the desert peach differ consider~ ably in flower color and abundance, in time of flowering, and undoubtedly in other ways. The variability in flowering time probably insures that at least some fruits will develop if a late spring frost occurs. Kay and his colleagues reported that individual clones in the same area might differ in flowering time by as much as a month. Kay and his coworkers also looked at seed germination in the desert peach and found that, in order for the seeds to grow, they had to be exposed to a low temperature for several weeks. The best germination figure-44 percent-occurred when the seeds were kept at 2 degrees C. for four weeks. This process of exposing seeds to cool, moist conditions (typically in soil or Desert...