One of four US National Parks (+ 1 US Nat'l Monument) named after plants, the roughly 800 000 acres (324 000 ha) of Joshua Tree National Park is solely located in southern California. Despite its size, that's less than 1 acre for each annual visitor – 1.25 million. Many of the visitors are photographers, and the body of photographs for this place reminds me of a question asked by Guy Tal in his essay: “Does the World Need Another Aspen Image?” (applied to the Joshua trees, of course).
Excellent descriptions of Yucca brevifolia can be found in the Flora of North America and Wikipedia.
i've never seen live, interesting form
I've been to Joshua Tree a few times and it just begs to be photographed. Certainly beautiful country down there.
Hmm, can I guess the four parks?
[ think ... stop thinking ... look up list ... ]
nope, I got two parks and the monument. Had to look up the other two.
Those interested in Joshua trees might like this article by Chris Clarke:
http://faultline.org/index.php/site/comments/joshua_trees_and_extinction/
(He includes a series of reference links in a post soon after that one.)
It's so good to see a photo of one of my favorite plants! I grew up on a Mohave Desert ranch with a Joshua Tree in the front yard. The tree had many more branches than the ones in the above photo. It also had a partially hollow trunk that ground squirrels (we called Chipmunks) often nested in. Way back then, Joshua Trees were part of the Lily family.