Plant Species of the Borrego Desert: Maximum Lifetimes
This page was just begun on 30 January 2025, so will be incomplete for some time
Desert perennial and shrub species have a range of maximum lifetimes, with some species having lifetimes of a few decades or less, and others having lifetimes so long that it is difficult for humans to be able to say with confidence exactly how long some of those species might live. Desert shrub species rarely produce annual growth rings, like those used to give the age of some montane trees that live for centuries. Some desert shrub species do produce annual growth rings, but they are often very difficult to see, and are not produced in years with insufficient rain.
The lifetimes of desert species with maximum lifetimes of a few decades or less are fairly easy to measure by direct observation during a single human lifetime. But the lifetimes of species with maximum lifetimes of centuries or more are much harder to determine.
Repeat photography is a fascinating way to study an individual plant's lifetime. The earliest photographs useful for repeat photography are from 1872, but with limited numbers before 1889.
Bowers, Webb and Rondeau 1995 were able to compile a collection of about 1,500 historical photographs along the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, and were able to replicate 1,159 of them between 1989 and 1994. Of those, 355 pairs were useful to determine longevity, recruitment, and mortality for 38 desert shrub species. Most of the data on this page is from their work.
Longevity estimates can also be made from shorter periods by studying mortality of individuals in a large enough plot surveyed over time, coupled with assumptions that there was nothing special about the observation time. Cody 2000 used a 15 year period in a plot in the Sweeney Granite Mountains Desert Research center to calculate birth and death rates for species that had births and/or deaths during that period, and estimate a likely minimum value for the maximum lifespans of other species in which no births or deaths were observed.
Some of the other assumptions that are needed to calculate a lower bound to the maximum lifetime are:
- The population is in steady-state, consisting of plants born over a period of time, with nothing special happening during the period of observation.
- steady-state climate conditions, with nothing special about the period of observation.
In particular, if there is significant mortality from an event that occurs only once per a time period longer than the observation period, such as a fifty year drought, or epidemics of plant disease that occur only one per fifty years, that violates the assumptions.
The likely minimum value depends on the period observed, and the number of plants in the sample. For example, if 1,000 plants were observed over a 10 year period, and none of the plants died, the maximum lifetime has to be much more than 100 years, using the following reasoning. If the maximum lifetime were 100 years, one would have expected 10% (10 years / 100 years) of the 1,000 plants to have died during the 10 years, 100 plants. It is statistically very improbable to observe no plants dying if you expected 100. Using the same statistical approach, one can calculate a lower bound to the maximum lifetime.
Other techniques, like radiocarbon dating, are sometimes useful for dating some individual plants.
One caveat on the lifetimes here is that our plants in the Borrego Desert might have different lifetimes than plants of the same species do in Arizona. In particular, Arizona has two roughly-equal rainfall periods, whereas we have mostly a single rainfall period, with very little monsoonal rain. Some plants of Ferocactus cylindraceus appear to live significantly longer here than the 55 years given for Arizona plants.
Clonal plants, that produce new stems or plants with identical DNA from rhizomes, or from the edge of their root system, are a special case. The most famous example is the "King Clone" creosote bush, that began as a single plant about 11,700 years ago. The plant started producing new stems from their root system, and gradually began to form a circle of plants, as the older original stems each died. That circle of genetically-identical plants can essentially grow forever, as long as conditions are favorable.
The most extreme example of a clonal plant lifetime so far known is that of Cylindropuntia bigelovii. A genetic analysis found that it and its close relatives diverged early from the rest of the Cylindropuntias, with an estimated date of 2 million years ago for that split! C. bigelovii is a sterile triploid, which cannot produce viable seeds, and hence its only means of reproduction is by its "easily detached" stem segments. Hence for ~2 million years, the same set of genes has been cloning itself repeatedly to produce new plants.
The lifetime given in Table 1 for such plants is the lifetime of non-clonal members of a given species, or the lifetime of an individual ramet (one individual part of the cline). Table 2 gives the estimated maximum lifetime of clones themselves.
Table 3 gives our other perennial / shrubs / trees in the Borrego Desert desert floor, or very near the desert floor, that I haven't yet found any info on their maximum lifetime.
If any reader comes across information on the lifetime of any of these plants, please let me know.
Table 1. Maximum Lifetimes of Borrego Desert Perennials and Shrubs
Scientific Name Max lifetime (years) Reference Agave deserti var. deserti 20-40 Dole and Rose 1996 Ambrosia dumosa > 100 Bowers et al 1995 Atriplex canescens var. laciniata > 100 Bowers et al 1995 Ceanothus perplexans > 90 Keeley 1975 Coleogyne ramosissima > 1250 Cody 2000 Encelia farinosa 70 Bowers et al 1995 Ferocactus cylindraceus 55 Bowers et al 1995 Fouquieria splendens ssp. splendens > 100 Bowers et al 1995 Hilaria rigida > 100 Bowers et al 1995 Krameria bicolor 184 Bowers 2005 Larrea tridentata 330 Bowers 2005 Lycium andersonii > 100 Bowers et al 1995 Opuntia basilaris var. basilaris > 100 Bowers et al 1995 Senegalia greggii > 100 Bowers et al 1995 Thamnosma montana > 1150 Cody 2000 Xylorhiza orcuttii > 20 tchester.org Yucca schidigera 200 Rundel and Gibson 1996 Table 2. Maximum Lifetimes of Clones of Borrego Desert Shrubs
Scientific Name Max lifetime (years) Reference Cylindropuntia bigelovii ~2,000,000 (!!) Majure et al 2019 Cylindropuntia fosbergii ?? Not yet known, but possibly very long, by comparison to C. bigelovii Larrea tridentata 11,700 "King Clone" creosote bush Yucca schidigera 700 PBS Guide: Seven Incredibly Old Mojave Desert Plants Table 3. Borrego Desert Perennials and Shrubs for which I haven't found info on their Maximum Lifetime
Acmispon rigidus Adenophyllum porophylloides Ambrosia salsola var. salsola Asclepias subulata Atriplex polycarpa Ayenia compacta Baccharis salicifolia ssp. salicifolia Bahiopsis parishii Bebbia juncea var. aspera Carlowrightia arizonica Chamaesyce polycarpa Chilopsis linearis ssp. arcuata Croton californicus Cucurbita palmata Cylindropuntia bigelovii Cylindropuntia echinocarpa Cylindropuntia ganderi Cylindropuntia ramosissima Dichelostemma capitatum ssp. capitatum Ditaxis lanceolata Echinocereus engelmannii Encelia frutescens Eriogonum inflatum Fagonia laevis Funastrum cynanchoides var. hartwegii Hesperocallis undulata Hibiscus denudatus Hyptis emoryi Isocoma acradenia var. eremophila Justicia californica Krameria erecta Lycium brevipes var. brevipes Mammillaria dioica Mirabilis laevis var. retrorsa Nicotiana obtusifolia Olneya tesota Orobanche cooperi Parkinsonia florida Peritoma arborea var. angustata Petalonyx thurberi ssp. thurberi Phoradendron californicum Pleurocoronis pluriseta Prosopis glandulosa var. torreyana Psorothamnus emoryi Psorothamnus schottii Psorothamnus spinosus Senna armata Simmondsia chinensis Sphaeralcea ambigua var. ambigua Stephanomeria pauciflora Stillingia linearifolia Suaeda nigra Tiquilia palmeri Tiquilia plicata Trixis californica var. californica References
Bowers, J.E., Webb, R.H., & Rondeua, R.J. 1995. Longevity, recruitment and mortality of desert plants in Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA, Journal of Vegetation Science 6: 551-564.
Bowers, J.E. 2005. Effects of drought on shrub survival and longevity in the northern Sonoran Desert, The J. of the Torrey Botanical Society, 132:421.
Cody, M.L. 2000. Slow-motion population dynamics in Mojave Desert perennial plants, Journal of Vegetation Science 11: 351-358. See also Cody's results in this article: PBS Guide: Seven Incredibly Old Mojave Desert Plants.
Dole, Jim W. and Rose, Betty B. 1996. Shrubs and Trees of the Southern California Deserts, Foot-Loose Press.
Majure, L.C., Baker, M.A., Cloud-Hughes, M., Salywon, A., & Neubig, K.M. 2019. Phylogenomics in Cactaceae: A case study using the chollas sensu lato (Cylindropuntieae, Opuntioideae) reveals a common pattern out of the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts, Amer. J. of Botany 106:1327.
PBS Guide: Seven Incredibly Old Mojave Desert Plants
Rundel, Philip W.; Gibson, Arthur C. 1996. Ecological communities and processes in a Mojave Desert ecosystem: Rock Valley, Nevada. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. 369 p.
I thank Fred Melgert for stimulating adding a list of some of the assumptions involved in calculating a lower bound to the maximum lifetime.
Go to:
Copyright © 2025 by Tom Chester.
Commercial rights reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce any or all of this page for individual or non-profit institutional internal use as long as credit is given to me at this source:
http://tchester.org/bd/species/max_lifetimes.html
Comments and feedback: Tom Chester
Updated 19 February 2025.