Larrea tridentata has been growing in the Mojave for over 11,000 years. The King Clone, a single clonal colony near Lucerne Valley, California, is one of the oldest living organisms on Earth. When it rains, the plant releases the oils that have been building in its leaves through the dry months. Woody, medicinal, ancient. It’s one of the two scents that started this company, and if you’ve ever driven Route 395 when a storm is building, you already know exactly what we mean.
The desert Southwest is getting drier and wetter at the same time. Longer droughts bake the ground until it can’t absorb anything, then climate change delivers rain in bursts the land has no idea what to do with. The result is flash floods, the number one storm-related killer in the United States. More than half of those deaths are people in vehicles who thought they could make it across, some of whom almost certainly had Friends of Coal (looking at you, Kentucky) stickers on their lifted trucks.
That’s the thing about creosote. To anyone who’s spent time in the desert Southwest, it’s one of the most beloved smells on earth. But sometimes it’s also a disaster warning.
