Weird Plants Archives

Celebrating Friedrich Welwitsch and the Surreal-Looking Tree: Welwitschia mirabilis

In 1862, Joseph Dalton Hooker described the plant as “the ugliest yet [most] botanically magnificent plant in the world.” February 5, 1806 Today is the birthday of the Austrian botanist and explorer Friedrich Welwitsch. Friedrich found a second home in Portugal, where he served as the Botanic Gardens director in Lisbon. Friedrich had some…

As Heard on The Daily Gardener Podcast: Weird Plants by Chris Thorogood Chris is a botanist at Oxford Botanic Garden. The cover of Chris’s book is captivating. It shows a very weird plant—it almost looks like a claw—and its grasp is the title of the book, “Weird Plants.” In this book, published by Kew Gardens,…