In the desert you will find a large variety of plants from annuals to perennials to flowers and many others - cacti are just one example. In deserts in Israel, cacti are a minority. Plants can be divided into three categories. The most common are C3 plants, which make up 85% of species and biomass. The rest of the species can be categorised into two groups: C4 plants and CAM plants. C3 plants get their name because the carbon product produced is a three carbon product. Similarly, C4 are called that because they produce a four carbon product. CAM is an acronym for crassulaceae acid metabolism. C4 and CAM plants are considered to be more tolerant to arid conditions such as drought, salinity, and high temperatures. Cacti are just one group of CAM plants. Plants in general when they open their stomata to absorb CO2 they lose water. CAM plants open their stomata at night, thereby minimising water loss. In C4 plants the enzyme that first takes in CO2 from the atmosphere is more efficient and therefore the time that the stomata opens can be shortened. . An example of C4 plants in maize, or corn. There are also many C3 plants that have specific adaptations, from being an annual that only grows for a short time when there is rain, to being very tolerant to salinity, nutrition deprivation, high light, and many other such adaptations. Other adaptations include unique symbiosis with the rhizosphere and other organisms. One annual plant in the Negev, called Salsola Inermis, was the first plant I studied as a researcher in the Negev. The uniqueness of this plant is that it is a summer annual desert plant, meaning it grows in summer months when there is no rain at all. It germinates at the end of March when there is minimal rain then grows to maturity in the summer, in an area that is very deprived of nitrogen. Two main factors for the plants in the desert is lack of water and nitrogen, making this plant special. With UC Berkeley we managed to find for the first time that this species uses water from dew. They distinguish dew from other water through the different chemical characteristics of hydrogen and oxygen in water. In addition, we found a unique three-way symbiosis between Salsola Inermis, weevils, and nitrogen fixing bacteria that live in the guts of the weevil. We showed that the weevils contribute nitrogen to the Salsola Inermis which they get from the bacteria, and the Salsola Inermis contributes sugars to the weevils in addition to water from the dew. All three organisms benefit.