Get to know 20 plants selected from Namibia. Discover their scientific names, identifying features and growing needs.
Citrullus lanatus
Citrullus lanatus, commonly known as watermelon, is a vigorous annual vine with deeply lobed, rough-textured leaves and yellow, monoecious flowers. The fruit is a large, oblong to round berry with a hard green rind often striped or mottled,
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Spathiphyllum wallisii
S. wallisii is an evergreen perennial with erect, lance-shaped, glossy dark green leaves, and ovate white flowering spathes to 15cm in length, each with a slender cream spadix within
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Persea americana
P. americana is a bushy evergreen shrub or small tree, with glossy, lance-shaped or elliptic leaves, rarely flowering in cultivation in temperate climates
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Psidium guajava
An evergreen shrub or small tree up to 6m tall with prominently-veined, ovate to oblong leaves up to 15cm long with serrated margins. White flowers to 2.5cm across with brush-like clusters of long stamens are borne singly or in small groups
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Crassula muscosa
A spreading, perennial succulent to 30cm high, forming a dense bush of branching stems with tightly overlapping green leaves. Bears tiny, tubular yellow-green flowers along the stems in spring.
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Delonix regia
A tropical, evergreen tree to 10m tall and wide in its native Madagascar. It bears elegant, fern-like leaves and clusters of exotic-looking, bright red flowers. In frost-prone areas grow in a temperate greenhouse as foliage plants, since th
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Cotyledon orbiculata
An evergreen, succulent shrub growing to 100cm tall. Its grey-green, oval leaves are coated with a white wax and sometimes have a red edge. Small, bell-shaped, orange-redflowers are borne on stems up to 70cm long in late summer and autumn
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Jatropha podagrica
J. podagrica is a shrubby perennial with a short stout caudex and branched fleshy, spiny stems bearing leathery 3 or 5-lobed leaves, whitish beneath, clustered at the tips, and small bright scarlet flowers in branched terminal clusters in s
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Adenium obesum
A succulent, shrubby perennial with very swollen stem-like caudex tapering to a branched apex bearing small clusters of red, pink or white flowers, which open before the ovate leaves
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Aloe arborescens
A bushy, evergreen, multi-headed, succulent shrub to 4m tall. Stems are topped by rosettes of long, slender, curved, blue-green leaves with toothed margins. Racemes of tubular red flowers are borne from late winter into spring
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Aloe juvenna
A branching, mound-forming succulent that has fleshy green leaves with toothed margins and decorative white flecks. The leaves are arranged in a starry formation around the stems. In summer it produces tubular, orangey-red flowers on slende
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Aloe vera
An evergreen perennial to 0.6m, forming rosettes of fleshy, narrow, dull green leaves with spiny margins, with long racemes of tubular greenish-yellow flowers 3cm in length in racemes to 90cm in length
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Artemisia vulgaris
An upright, rhizomatous, herbaceous perennial growing up to 2.5m tall with aromatic, petiolate, deeply lobed, deep green leaves. Creamy-yellow flowers appear in late Summer as dense, leafy panicles. A well known medicinal plant with edible,
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Datura stramonium
A symmetrically branched annual, found in garden borders, on roadsides and on wasteland, with large, coarsely toothed, oval green leaves. White, trumpet-shaped flowers, sometimes flushed purple appear in July to October are followed by spin
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Kalanchoe daigremontiana
K. daigremontiana is an upright succulent perennial with trinagular-lance-shaped, grey-green leaves, often spotted with brown, and with a row of plantlets on each edge; pendent, tubular greyish pink flowers 2cm long open in winter
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Mirabilis jalapa
M. jalapa is a bushy, tuberous perennial often grown as an annual, with fragrant flowers opening in the afternoon, in a wide range of colours, and sometimes bicoloured
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Plumbago auriculata
P. auriculata is an evergreen shrub to 4m or more (with support), with slender, scandent stems bearing light green, spoon-shaped leaves and terminal racemes of sky-blue, long-tubed flowers 15mm across
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Sonchus oleraceus
An upright biennial to 1.5m, with a strong taproot, hollow stems, long, narrow, lobed, wavy leaves edged with soft spines. Clusters of yellow, dandelion-like flowers in summer are followed by fluffy, white seedheads
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Pachypodium lamerei
P. lamerei is a succulent shrub or small tree with thick, thorny stems bearing a cluster of narrow leaves near the apex, and terminal clusters of yellow-throated white flowers 10cm across in summer
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Euphorbia pulcherrima
A semi-evergreen shrub with large, bluntly toothed, ovate leaves and tiny yellow flowers with leaf-like bright red bracts, opening in winter
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