Desert

Desert

A desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Most deserts have an average annual precipitation of less than 400 millimetres (16 in). A common definition distinguishes between true deserts, which receive less than 250 millimetres (10 in) of average annual precipitation, and semideserts or steppes, which receive between 250 millimetres (10 in) and 400 to 500 millimetres (16 to 20 in).

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Famous quotes containing the word desert:

    They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
    Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
    I have it in me so much nearer home
    To scare myself with my own desert places.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    It’s alive and waiting for you. Ready to kill you if you go too far. The sun will get you, or the cold at night. A thousand ways the desert can kill.
    Harry Essex (b. 1910)

    The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
    So rudely forced: yet there the nightingale
    Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
    And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
    “Jug Jug” to dirty ears.
    —T.S. (Thomas Stearns)