Quail Springs

Take the next right for Quail Springs, tables and grills among the Joshua trees, and it's another right when you leave. Pit toilets, no water, so your nearest fill-up is behind you at the gate. This whole forest hangs on a moth the size of a rice grain. You won't see it from the car. It's called the yucca moth, and tree and moth each depend entirely on the other. With mouthparts called tentacles, the female scrapes up pollen, forms it into a ball and carries it to another flower. Her caterpillars eat some of the seeds, not all. That's the accepted account. As of two thousand six, nobody had truly watched the female do it. The moth keeps its secrets. White-tailed antelope squirrels take most of the fruit straight off the tree. Seeds buried less than half an inch deep sprout best, and seeds left on the surface seldom do. Those squirrels are among the park's most common mammals, so the one eyeing your sandwich may be a forester. The park says the giant ground sloth once ate the big seeds and spread them in its dung, letting the tree move quickly, though that may be exaggerated, and no sloth fossil has been found inside the park. The tree needs to move. With strong climate action, about nineteen percent of the park's Joshua tree habitat could survive to the end of the century, and fourteen percent with moderate action. If nothing changes, it would be almost entirely gone. So when the trees had a big seed year in two thousand twenty-two, park staff hoped to harvest seed for storage here and at a national lab in Fort Collins, Colorado. Before you leave any parking space out here, look under your car. Animals may be using it for shade.