ABSTRACT
Roots of desert plants face environmental extremes of drought and temperature. Such extremes help focus attention on the adaptations that enable desert plants to cope with these stresses, although the same adapta-tions often occur for plants growing in other environ-ments. High temperatures can occur in superficial soil layers in deserts, thereby affecting root distribution. The ability to survive limited and often sporadic rain-fall is highly developed for desert plants, so various adaptations in response to temporal and spatial het-erogeneity in soil moisture have evolved. In the follow-ing, such adaptations will be examined. First, certain physical features of deserts, especially as they relate to roots, will be characterized. Root deployment strate-gies that have evolved to cope with such physical fac-tors will then be discussed, paying particular attention to the root systems of agaves and cacti.
