The welwitschia might be the strangest-looking plant on the whole planet! It lives in a super dry desert called the Namib Desert in Africa, and here is the truly wild part: it only ever grows two leaves in its entire life. Those two leaves just keep growing longer and longer, and over hundreds of years, the hot desert wind and sand shred them into messy, curly ribbons that spread out across the ground. A big welwitschia can look like a giant green octopus sitting in the sand! The plant has a short, thick, woody trunk that looks like a big stump.
Even though the welwitschia looks strange, it is one of the toughest plants alive. Some welwitschias are more than 1,000 years old, which means they were already growing before many famous castles were even built! The Namib Desert hardly ever gets rain, so the welwitschia has a clever trick: it collects tiny water droplets from the fog that rolls in from the Atlantic Ocean every morning. Its leaves are covered in special pores that soak up the fog like a sponge. Scientists call the welwitschia a “living fossil” because its plant family has been around since the time of the dinosaurs. There is truly nothing else like it anywhere on Earth!
