Hi Laura,
Are you looking for desert native species? If so, my resources may help.
I had a simmilar problem to yours while developing a planting pallet for the project I’m working on in Pakistan. Some helpful resources for my plant lists were the books, “Planting Guide to the Middle East,” by Aubrey W. Van-Ollenbach, and “Landscape Design for the Middle East,” by Timothy Cochrane. Also a research paper by Ikram Ilahi Chaudhri called “The Vegetation of Karachi,” which talks a lot about desert restoration and desert grass species.
On the web, the University of Florida Horticultural department has quite a bit of information on the species I’ve come up with, and same with Arizona State’s Horticultural department. Plus some univeristies have links to campus plantings like the University of Cairo and King Saud University. Also there’s efloras.org which seems to be more on the botany side than growing habits.
If you need desert wetland information, Wetland International (http://www.wetlands.org/rsis/) has mapped plant information on various regions in the Middle East.
Hope that helps.
–Cortney
