Bizarre, Monster-Like Plants

We headed north of the Sesriem Canyon to see samples of the Welwitschia Mirabilis plants. When we asked what was so special about it, our guide explained by way of repeating what the Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Gardens (whose name escapes me) said to his audience in Kew in 1863, when this plant was presented to him. “It is out of the question the most wonderful plant ever brought to this country, and one of the ugliest,” he said apparently. That got us intrigued.

The Welwitschia Mirabilis plants are unusual for their large, strap-like leaves that grow continuously along the ground. During its entire life, each plant produces only two leaves, which often split into many segments as a result of them being whipped by the wind, giving the illusion of many leaves.

Carbon-14 dating of the largest plants have shown that some individuals are over 1,500 years old. They are endemic to the Namib Desert, the world’s oldest, with extreme arid conditions stretching in the western part of Namibia along the coast up to the southwestern part of Angola.

The area receives no rainfall during some years and averages fewer than 100 millimeters per year, but most specimens are found within 80 kilometers of the coast in a fog belt, suggesting that the fog is an important moisture source. I tried to imagine how this strange plant would look like and for some reason, conjured an image of a green monster.

Our guide told us that we will view these plants on the Welwitschia Flache, a desert plain about 50 kilometers east of Swakopmund and east of the confluence of the Khan and Swakop Rivers.

When we reached the area, we parked among the sands. We saw green, alien-looking formations that grew in isolated clusters...and they actually came pretty similar to what I had imagined earlier. Upon closer inspection, we began to understand what makes these bizarre plants tick.

They have short, unbranched, woody stems bearing only two strap-like leaves. We were told that each leaf can continue to grow throughout its lifetime, which can last a considerable while. If the plant is healthy, the average Welwitschia can be expected to survive for an average of 500 years, but some specimens are believed to be over 2,000 years old, that’s why they are also dubbed as “living fossils.”

But what one sees above ground is only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, for they are actually curious trees with large, mostly underground taproot-like trunks that have corky barks and high-water storage capacity. We could only imagine how complex they were, probably like tangled computer wires and cables in a chaotic office server room, that is, if we could see underneath the soil.

Our guide mentioned that these botanical wonders are much coveted, and as such, are growing endangered. Luckily, their far-flung, difficult-to-traverse habitat deep in the Namib Desert serves as their natural protection.

I suddenly remembered the monster plants in the 1980s movie, Little Shop of Horrors, and I mentioned it to my fellow travellers. In the film, a nerdy florist finds his success in romance with the help of a giant man-eating plant who demands to be fed. Though the monster plant in the film is by definition, a hybrid version of a Venus Flytrap, these plants were sort of comparable.

By instinct, we all stepped back as if expecting one of the plants to lash out its deadly tongue and swallow us alive. Or maybe, one of its leaves would stretch out like a horsewhip and flog our behinds. Even worse, they'd all come crawling toward us like a swarm of deadly mutant octopi, swooping us in one shot and burying us into the ground to become fodder for their network of roots.

Oh boy, all these other-worldly sights were surely propelling our imaginations wild!