Arabian sand desert
RESOLVE 810
The Arabian Sand Desert spans the great sand seas of the Arabian Peninsula, lying predominantly in Saudi Arabia and crossing into the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and Oman; it takes in the Rub' al-Khali, or Empty Quarter, the world's largest sand desert, along with the an-Nafud, ad-Dahna, and al-Jafurah dune fields of linear and crescent dunes interspersed with gravel and gypsum plains. Vegetation is sparse and highly drought-adapted, with Calligonum shrubs colonizing dune slopes alongside chenopod genera such as Cornulaca and Haloxylon, while scattered trees including Acacia ehrenbergiana and the ghaf (Prosopis cineraria) persist mainly along the desert margins. The climate is hyper-arid and intensely hot, with summer temperatures that can exceed 50 degrees Celsius and scant, seasonal rainfall that falls off from north to south. Despite its name, the Empty Quarter is far from lifeless: it is the stronghold for the reintroduced Arabian oryx, the ecoregion's flagship species, which was restored after near-extinction from overhunting in the mid-twentieth century. Gardeners drawn to xeric planting will recognize ghaf (Prosopis cineraria) and Acacia among the heat- and drought-hardy genera native here.
About the deserts & xeric shrublands biome
Arid and semi-arid lands where low, erratic rainfall and high evaporation limit vegetation to drought-adapted shrubs, succulents, and sparse grasses. Day-to-night temperature swings are large, and life is finely tuned to water scarcity.
Collections for this ecoregion
No curated collection's plants all fit this ecoregion's zone range. We surface a collection only when every member would grow here — partial fits get filtered out rather than mislead. As the catalog and the curated set both grow, this section will fill in.