Manzanita
Arctostaphylos spp.
Manzanita does not often live out on the broad, bare floor of the Mojave, where the sun lies hard on the gravel and the wind has room to run. It keeps instead to the cooler country: rocky slopes, mountain flanks, pinyon woodland, and the places where desert gives way to chaparral.
It is an evergreen shrub, close-built and stubborn. Its bark is smooth and dark red, like polished wood. The leaves are thick and leathery, made to hold what little water comes. In winter and spring, little white or pink bells hang among the branches. Later come the small round fruits that gave the plant its Spanish name: manzanita, little apple.
Several kinds of manzanita grow around the Mojave's mountain edges. Bigberry manzanita, Arctostaphylos glauca, occurs in the region, including Joshua Tree National Park. Other kinds live farther up in the hills, where winter brings more rain, sometimes snow, and where the ground is broken stone instead of open sand.
Birds and animals take the fruit. The shrub gives them food and cover, and in return they carry its hard seeds away. Fire may pass through this country, but manzanita has lived with fire for a long time. Some kinds rise again from the root; others wait in the soil as seed until rain and season give them their chance.
There is nothing delicate about manzanita. It belongs to the hard borderland of the Mojave, where a plant must be able to wait, endure, and keep its green through a long dry year.
References
National Park Service, Bigberry Manzanita, Joshua Tree National Park
U.S. Forest Service, Arctostaphylos glauca
U.S. Forest Service, Arctostaphylos pungens