I always though vegetation can’t grow on sand, but then there was this news about a mini forest pop up after the monsoon rain in Saudi Arabia.
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As others have mentioned, soil is the combination of mineral (i.e., ground up rocks) and organic content under your feet – i.e., sand, silt, clay, decaying plants and animals, their wastes, etc.
When people talk about sand, they can mean one of two things: (1) the mineral portion of the soil with particles whose diameters fall into a specific range (e.g., 0.075 cm to 4.75 cm in the Unified Soil Classification System, aka USCS); or (2) a soil whose predominant constituent is sand particles (e.g., under USCS a soil classified as a sand consists of more sand than gravel, and >5% silt + clay).
So in the context of your question, plants can grow in a soil that is classified as a sand, which is classified as such because it is mostly sand-sized particles. Most plants can’t grow well in sandy soils for various reasons, but some have evolved ways to do it.
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