This desert tree was in a shallow wadi in the haruj area of Libya. 25-years later, I wonder if it's still there. You can tell that even then limbs had been cut off, presumably for firewood. The shape of the tree was part of the reason for the photo, but most of the reason was because the tree existed at all. The green scrubby bushes show that moisture wasn't far below the sandy surface here, but where did that moisture come from? It didn't rain much. My guess is that there was some clay layer not too far down that kept what little moisture there was in proximity to the surface while the sand, a poor conductor of heat, worked to prevent the moisture below the surface from evaporating. In most of the Libyan desert a solar still would not work. Here it might just.
