Joshua trees take 30 or more years to flower or reproduce. Many say 19th-century Mormon settlers named these plants after the biblical Joshua because their branches looked like his arms, raised toward ...

Joshua trees are important for the entire desert ... showy clusters of milky-white blooms that grow at the end of their branches, making the flowers easy to pick out in photos.

Mormon settlers may have given Joshua trees their name in the mid-1800s. The story goes that these pioneers believed the trees' limbs resembled the upstretched arms of the Biblical figure Joshua ...