Creosote Bush

Larrea tridentata is an evergreen shrub growing to 1 to 3 m (3 to 10 ft) tall, rarely 4 m (13 ft). The light gray stems of the plant bear resinous, dark green leaves with two opposite lanceolate leaflets joined at the base, with a deciduous awn between them, each leaflet 7 to 18 mm (1⁄4 to 11⁄16 in) long and 4 to 8.5 mm (5⁄32 to 11⁄32 in) broad. The flowers are up to 25 mm (1 in) in diameter, with five yellow petals. The fruit is a brown-burgundy spherical, fuzzy capsule, which separates into five individual carpels each containing one seed. Galls may form by the activity of the creosote gall midge. The whole plant exhibits a characteristic odor of creosote, from which the common name derives. In the regions where it grows, its smell is often associated with the "smell of rain", as the scent of its resinous leaves intensifies in rain.

Larrea tridentata is a prominent species in the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan Deserts of western North America, and its range includes those and other regions in portions of southeastern California, Arizona, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah, New Mexico, and Texas in the United States, and Chihuahua, Sonora, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Zacatecas, Durango and San Luis Potosì in Mexico. The species grows as far east as Zapata County, Texas, along the Rio Grande southeast of Laredo near the 99th meridian west.

These animals eat these parts of the creosote bush:

Leaves: Of mammals, only the jackrabbit, and only when it can find no other food, as the leaves are bitter; desert iguanas, and the chuckwalla. Seeds: desert woodrats and kangaroo rats Flowers: 22 species of bees, as pollinators, the chuckwalla, desert iguanas, etc. Many species of insects The Arabian camel, brought to the area by the United States Camel Corps, readily ate creosote bush. It is thought that this meeting reestablished a biological relationship that was broken when the American camels became extinct in the Quaternary Extinction Event, making it an evolutionary anachronism.

Native Americans in the Southwest held beliefs that it treated many maladies, including sexually transmitted diseases, tuberculosis, chicken pox, dysmenorrhea, and snakebite. The Coahuilla Indians used the plant for intestinal complaints and tuberculosis. The Pima drank a decoction of the leaves as an emetic, and applied the boiled leaves as poultices to wounds or sores. Tohono O'odham Indians prepared it medicinally for stiff limbs, snake bites, and menstrual cramps. The shrub is still widely used as a herbal medicine in Mexico. In other uses, the reddish-colored lac that exudes from the plant was used by the Tohono O'odham, after boiling, to make a mending glue on broken pottery.