Welwitshia - a living plant fossil This is one of the largest and strangest plants known to science. It is also potentially the longest living plant. Carbon 14 tests have shown that some plants are 750 years old and might live for over a 1 000 years.
Most desert growths are small. Welwitshia is more like a tree, which has been driven underground, to avoid sandstorms and the heat. The taproot is a trunk, which goes down 18 metres or more to draw water from old riverbeds, under the sand. It can attain a circumference of 4 metres.
Welwitshia has been called the "desert octopus" because of its huge heap of long leaves. It exudes a thick, sugary resin, without intending to trap victims. It is in fact a submerged relative of the pines.
Welwitshia survive and seem to thrive in these dry parts where rainfall is never more than 25 mm a year and where rainless years are no exception. The plant has only two leaves springing from the outside of its core. These may be 3 metres long. The leaves catch the sea mists that spread over the desert coast. Both leaves grow though out the plant's life and are never shed.
So as far back as 1916 already, the Welwitshia had to be protected. Anyone who injures, uproots or destroys a Welwitshia, without a permit, may have to pay a hefty fine, or spend some time in prison. |