Plant Of The Week: Elephant Tree

Elephant tree is a common name for several plants with swollen stems and refers to the following desert plant.

Bursera microphylla, a species in the Burseraceae family native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Bursera microphylla is a North American species of tree in the Frankincense Family in the soapwood order. Bursera microphylla, known by the common name elephant tree in English or 'torote' in Spanish, is a tree in genus Bursera. It grows into a distinctive sculptural form, with a thickened, water-storing or caudiciform trunk. It is found in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico.

Bursera microphylla is generally a small tree with a thickened trunk and relatively small branching structure in comparison to the trunk size; it is semi-succulent and stores water in the conductive and parenchymal tissues of the trunk, lower limbs, and wood. Shreve (1964) classified the plant as a sarcocaulescent tree. The sarcocaulescent habit acts as a buffer against variation in environmental water balance (Turner et al., 1995). The leaves are alternate, without stipules, and are mostly once-pinnate or twice-pinnate but can be unifoliate or trifoliate in some species (Rzedowski and Kruse 1979). Bursera microphylla reaches up to 33 feet in height and its bark is light gray to white, with younger branches having a reddish color. The light foliage is made up of long, straight, flat, legume-like leaves which are composed of paired leaflets. It flowers in rounded yellow buds which open into small, star-shaped, white or cream flowers. The fruit is a drupe containing a yellow stone

This plant is a rare plant in the US in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park region, Sonoran Desert and also found in the Santa Rosa Mountains and also in some parts of the south western part of the Arizona. This plant is typically designed to adapt to desert climate, with a thick trunk that stores water for days. It is small in size and its branches are quite small in comparison to the size of its trunk. It also stores water in its lower limbs and wood, apart from the trunk. 

The foliage of the plant is quite lightly distributed which has flat, long, legume like leaves and exist in paired leaflets. The flowers are born as rounded yellow structures in the bud form and slowly blossom into beautiful small, star shaped white or cream colored flowers. Most of the species of this plant are drought deciduous owing to the warm climatic conditions and has leaves throughout the year, except in drought and extreme cold weather.

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