The baseball plant is one of the coolest-looking plants you will ever see! It is shaped exactly like a round, green ball with ridges running from top to bottom that look just like the stitching on a real baseball. Unlike most plants in its family, the baseball plant does not have any sharp spines or prickly thorns, which makes it look even more like a smooth little ball. It is actually not a cactus at all, but a type of plant called a euphorbia that comes from the dry, rocky hills of South Africa. Most baseball plants only grow to be about the size of a tennis ball.
The baseball plant grows very, very slowly, sometimes taking many years to get as big as your fist. Its round shape is actually a smart way to store water inside its body so it can survive long periods without any rain. Because it looks so much like a stone or a pebble, hungry animals usually walk right past it without even noticing! Sadly, the baseball plant has become very rare in the wild because too many people collected them to keep as houseplants. Now there are laws in South Africa to protect them, and most baseball plants that people buy today are grown in special nurseries instead of taken from nature.
