There’s no need to travel to the deserts of Namibia to see one of the world’s most curious plants.
Check out this crazy plant, Welwitschia mirabilis, that’s at Brisbane Botanic Gardens Mt Coot-tha in Brisbane advises Daniel Fuller on LinkedIn. It only ever has two leaves. Those leaves are the seed leaves, or cotyledons. You know those two leaves that first emerge from a broccoli or weed seedling? They’re the same thing, except they keep growing on this plant and eventually start to split down the veins.
It’s a monoecious gymnosperm that never really felt the need to mature into a grown-up shape, instead it just chills as a perpetual juvenile.
Here’s a link to the Mt Coot-tha website
But, if you do want to see the plant in its natural habitat, have a look at this video on YouTube. It is from Crime Pays but Botany Doesn’t and covers several rare plants in situ around the world.
