A desert is a very dry biome. They get less than 25 cm (about 10 inches) of rainfall a year. It can also be described as a place that loses more water through evaporation than gets water through precipitation.
These kinds of areas cover about 33% of the land on Earth. That’s one third of the earth. That includes much of Antarctica, where large areas get no snow at all. The largest hot desert is the Sahara desert in northern Africa, covering 9 million square kilometers (about 3½ million square miles).
The surfaces of deserts can vary. They can be covered with stones, sand dunes, and permafrost (permanently frozen ground). They are home to a wide variety of animals and plants.
Plants that live in the desert have special features that help them lose as little water to evaporation as possible. Instead of thin broad leaves, they may have needles or waxy leaves that point up to hide as much of the leaf from the sun as possible to prevent losing water. Below are some examples of desert plants.
Cactus
Joshua Tree
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Yucca Plant
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(edited from – source)