Welwitschia

OK, as promised only a few minutes ago, here is the second post today for No-Profundity. This post is obviously quite different from the earlier one today but this post is related to the Awesome Plant theme that Mad North Northwest is heading up at the Mullet of Blogs this week.

This is about the Welwitschia Mirabilis which is my favorite plant in the world. I think they are really intriguing in a number of ways including that they are sometimes called fossil plants as they are from the Jurassic period.

The pictures above are ones I took of them as I ventured out into the Namib Desert across the Welwitschia plain which has the largest concentration of them. That means that there may be a handful of them per acre. They only grow in the Namib Desert in Namibia and Angola. There are separate Male and Female plants. The Welwitschia can grow to be over 1500 years old. Both of the ones I have pictured above are probably 800-1200 years old.

The Welwitschia have only 2 leaves, even though it looks like they have many because the wind shreds the two large leaves into tassles. Living in the desert these plants also get the water they need to grow from absorbing the little moisture that forms as dew on their leaves. It is actually absorbed into the leaves not through the root of the plant. The one in the third picture above is the largest known one and it is 4 feet tall and over 12 feet around. If that isn't an AWESOME Plant that is deserving of being related to Awesome Plant week at the Mullet, I don't know what is.