Bottle Tree

Image: bathyporeia
Pachypodium lealii

Desert plants like this are definitely my favourites. In their effort to survive the arid conditions, they end up looking like they long since succumbed to them.

I love the living dead-looking!

Image: Petr Kosina

This particular survivor lives (yes, LIVES! Despite all appearances) in the rocky, arid and semi-desert regions of south-western Angola and neighbouring north-western Namibia in southern Africa.

They're named after the fact that their swollen trunk makes them look a lot like a bottle. And, just like all good bottles in the desert, it's full of water to help the Bottle Tree survive the desert-like conditions that tend to prevail in deserts.

It's also full of poison. This is not the kind of thing you want to find in your water bottles, but it does help the Bottle Tree actually keep its water. Which was their plan all along. That's why it's a Bottle Tree and not just a bottle. The poison is so effective that hunters in the region used to smear the sap on their arrows, just to add that extra 'oomph'. And yet no-one calls it a Poison Dart Tree!

Image: Hans Stieglitz

It all works rather well for the Bottle Tree, and they can grow to some 8 metres (26 ft) in height. Although sometimes they only reach about 1 metre (3 ft) tall. If you want to survive in a desert, you need to be willing to give a little. Or a lot. Like 7 metres (23 ft) of your potential height.

However tall a Bottle Tree grows, it'll be almost entirely branchless until the very top. The leaves grow on slender branches and are jealously defended from herbivores by sharp spines.

Image: Robur.q

Around May to November the leaves will all drop off as the Bottle Tree diverts all its effort into growing surprisingly extravagant flowers.

It's strange to see this thorny hunk of dry, desert-beaten wood emerging from the rocky ground, covered in frilly, white flowers. Then again, who says the dead-looking can't be garlanded with flowers?