Yucca at Dusk / by Dave Hileman

This is one of the plants that not only live but thrive on the White Sands National Monument in Alamagordo, NM. What an amazing place. The sand is gypsum and this is by far the largest dunes of the kind in the world, over 275 square miles (number 2 has 2 square miles). It is soft, does not hold heat from the sun and is full of moisture deep underneath the surface.