In the northern region of the Sonoran Desert, surrounded by five mountain ranges and 350 days of sunshine, lies Tucson where native edible plants grow. The saguaro, barrel and nopal cacti are staples ...

Some see the Sonoran Desert as a harsh wasteland, but Paul "Crash" Marusich sees it as a garden of nutritional and medicinal wonder. And, as an Arizona native, the interpretive ranger has exactly one ...

Tagging along with my daughter, Ann, to her conference in Palm Desert, Calif., last week was part of my vacation. The really, really hot part. “The surface of the sun” was what Ann called it. Yet the ...

Though we may live in a concrete desert, there are plenty — to be more specific, tens of thousands — of edible plants growing in the Valley. And we’re not just talking about in Wickenburg or down near ...

Johnson's focus is on teaching native food traditions to O'odham tribal members. For others interested in learning about edible desert plants, respect is key, he says. After all, Tucson sits on ...

Master gardener Florence Nishida has mentored many edible garden creators at the L.A. Green Grounds demonstration garden. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) This is the latest in a series we call ...

Jean Groen and Don Wells are kind of like Sonny and Cher - if Sonny and Cher lived in Apache Junction and did comedy bits about edible desert plants. The pair, who have written three books about foods ...

There is a trend of growing plants that take a lot of care to flourish in the desert. These include tropical or subtropical plants for permaculture “food forests” like avocado and sapote and tender ...

Its leaves taste like spinach, its seeds are a nutritious cereal grain substitute, and its flowers serve as a bold accent in the annual garden bed. Yet it nearly became extinct half a millennium ago.

• Desert truffles are edible hypogeous fungi forming ectendomycorrhizal symbiosis with plants of Cistaceae family. Knowledge about the reproductive modes of these fungi and the molecular mechanisms ...