Cladodes

One of the shifts in environment that I noticed driving to Uluru from the South Australia was the how tangled shrubbery gave way to these trees, which looked to me to be some sort of pine.  However, I learned that they are in fact desert oaks and what I had mistaken for pine needles were actually something called a “cladode” which means a “flattened leaf-like stem” from the Greek word kladōdēs meaning “with many shoots”.