A rare desert plant unexpectedly performed better after a huge solar project was built across its Mojave habitat. At Nevada's Gemini Solar Project, threecorner milkvetch plants growing inside the 20-square-kilometre facility produced roughly eight times more flowers and ten times more fruit than plants at an undisturbed site outside the project.
The result surprised researchers because utility-scale solar development can disturb desert soils and vegetation. But Gemini used construction methods designed to minimise that disturbance, leaving areas of vegetation and soil intact. A 2025 peer-reviewed study found that the rare annual persisted inside the facility and, during the year studied, grew larger, reproduced more and reached its fruiting stage nearly three weeks earlier than plants outside.
