Its the national plant of Namibia, and its a real odd-ball at that :)
First off, it grows nowhere else in the world but in the Namib deserts and even then only in certain places.
It looks like a large pile of green rags out in the desert but is in fact a type of tree!
And its also a single type. For most plants in a group there are assorted sub-types and relations, but not for this one, its all by its self with only the one variety and no relations.
Its a very ancient and specialized tree but its not a herbaceous type plant like it appears at first glance. In fact this tree has only two leaves (one on one side and another on the other side) and they never die or get shed, they just keep growing out of the top of the trunk forever... The trunk of the tree is wholly buried in the ground and is about 2m tall, at the base of which is a horizontal type root structure (used primarily to gather water).
The leaves as I said just keep growing but they get tattered and torn into strips by the elements and animal activity and it looks like they have many ribbon type leaves when in fact there are only two as I have said. But the tree does not use the leaves beyond about 2m in length. After the leaves have "extruded" past that point, the tree abandons the leaf cells, reabsorbs all the nutrients it can from them and then cuts off the water to those cells... so the ends of the leaves are always dead and very tatty.
And given that the tree grows in supper arid conditions, it grows extremely slowly, so big plants are very old indeed...
To give you an idea of how old, the central woody disc (the top of the tree trunk) grows about1cm in diameter for every decade the tree lives... And there are well documented examples of specimens measuring over 2m across... That's over 2000 years old!
In fact, they are not known to ever die of natural causes... They are destroyed by external activities only! They may be hard to get started but once they are growing they are nigh on eternal :)
That said, they are rather hard to cultivate elsewhere since you need a male plant, a female plant, and the very specialized little bug that pollinates the plants and they all need to be in an environment that they find tolerable together :)... not that most people would want one in their garden.
Most of the plants I have pictured here are about 500-700 years old.
In this last one some of the sand has been washed away around the plant and the trunk of the tree has been exposed.
