Namibia’s intriguing desert flora: Wonderful Welwitschia

Among Namibia’s intriguing desert flora that have adapted over time to live in arid areas are some amazing species like the Welwitschia.

When Austrian naturalist and botanist Friedrich Welwitsch first set eyes on it in southern Angola in 1859, he is said to have knelt down in awe.

Welwitschia mirabili’s, ‘mirabilis’ meaning miracle or wonderful, has two long, flat-lying leaves shredded over time by wind and heat, and bears orange cones.

It grows in isolated communities along the desert coastal strip from Namibe in southern Angola to the Kuiseb River in Namibia, never more than 150km from the coast.

Perfect conditions are needed for germination to occur, and in the desert where 15mm of annual rain is never guaranteed, new life is a special and rare event.

The plants live to be hundreds of years old; some of the older plants are believed to be 2 000 years old.

With characteristics of both gymnosperms (seed-producing plants like cones and cycads) and angiosperms (flowering plants), the ‘living fossil’ had scientists flummoxed.

Welwitschia’s ancestors are thought to have lived as far back as the Jurassic period, 145- to 200-million years ago when dinosaurs still roamed the planet and when gymnosperms were abundant, surviving and adapting as the environment became more arid.

Eventually, scientists gave the plant its own family in the small order of gymnosperms, the Gnetales.

The female and male plants are easily differentiated by their orange-coloured cone-like structures, the female producing the larger ‘cones’ and the males producing the smaller, more oblong-shaped ‘cones’.

Although the plants appear to be wind-pollinated, pollination is attributed to wasps and insects that travel between the male and female plants. The seeds are dispersed by wind.

A protected species and Namibian national symbol, these large and out-of-the-ordinary plants are one of the many wonders of the Namib Desert.