Nature has a very strange plant inventory. Check out these botanical buddies that look like movie props from another planet but are 100% real!
When you think of a basic plant, you usually imagine a few leaves, a colorful flower, a long stem, and other simple physical traits. However, there are certain plants that look so alien they may fool you into thinking they aren’t even real! Have a look at the list of the top weirdest-looking members of the plant kingdom!
Plants That Look Fake But Are 100% Real
1. Living Stones
Botanical Name: Lithops
Are they pebbles, stones, or rocks? None, actually—they are living stones! These tiny plants are succulents known for their pastel green and grey, segmented, lip-like, thick, fused leaves, which help them blend in with other pebbles.
They are really tiny in size, often ranging from 1 cm to 5 cm. Another really cool feature is that from these small succulents a surprising daisy-like bloom appears!
2. Jackal Food
Botanical Name: Hydnora Africana
This plant does not look like it grows on planet Earth! In fact, everything, including its appearance, smell, and growth habits, is unusual. This parasitic plant gets all its nutrients by growing on the root system of its host plant.
It spends most of its lifetime hidden underground, and the only portion that emerges out of the soil is a peculiar fleshy peach-colored flower. Also, if you happen to overlook it by sight, you won’t be able to miss the rotten feces-like smell that it uses to attract its pollinators.
3. Snake Plant
Botanical Name: Dracaena trifasciata
Unlike most others on this list, the snake plant is quite well known across the globe. It is a succulent with long, upright, sword-like leaves. The foliage looks attractive due to the patterned bands all over it.
Having the ability to grow in low-light conditions, this plant is extremely hard to kill as it can survive in almost any environment. Additionally, upon its physical traits, the snake plant is an amazing air purifier known to reduce a significant amount of toxins from the air.
4. Venus Flytrap
Botanical Name: Dionaea muscipula
Plants can’t be violent, right? Wrong, just ask the flies that turned into a meal of the Venus Flytrap! This alien-looking carnivorous plant looks like it comes right out of the sets of a horror movie! Known for its brightly-colored, jaw-like leaves that it uses to trap small insects for its nourishment.
It has this unusual diet because it cannot get enough nitrogen from the soil, so it digests insects to make up for it. Venus Flytrap does not like fertilizers or hard water, so it’s best to use simple distilled water.
5. Carrion Flower
Botanical Name: Stapelia gigantea
If you spot a giant star-shaped flower that emits a foul stench, you’ve just come across the carrion flower. This strange plant is categorized as a succulent due to its fleshy, 4-angled stems, but its claim to fame is its large, wrinkled, star-shaped flowers that have a fuzzy texture due to the hair present on them.
The disgusting odor actually plays a crucial role in ensuring the continuity of the plant’s survival. This smell tricks flies into thinking that the plant is a decaying carcass, and hence they are attracted towards it, which helps in propagating the carrion flower.
6. Corpse Flower
Botanical Name: Amorphophallus titanium
From its huge size to its strong smell, the corpse flower is the definition of an unreal plant that actually exists. This plant, found only in parts of Indonesia, is hard to miss as it can grow up to 10 feet tall!
If you ever see it bloom, consider yourself lucky, as it blooms once every 10 years, and the flower lasts only a few days. It gets its name from the rotting smell it releases to attract pollinators.
7. Baseball Plant
Botanical Name: Euphorbia obesa
One look at this succulent and you’ll know why it’s called the baseball plant. With its almost perfectly round shape and even ridges, this rare plant looks like a ball.
It has no leaves and performs photosynthesis through its stem alone. Sadly, this fascinating plan is endangered due to a plethora of reasons that include slow growth, each plant pod producing only 2-3 seeds, and over-poaching in the wild.
8. ZZ Plant
Botanical Name: Zamioculcas zamiifolia
The ZZ plant looks like an artificial prop made just for decoration. This is because of the almost machine-made glossy leaves that look like glistening plastic. Each leaflet is uniformly shaped and arranged along the stem that emerge from a thick, underground rhizome.
This perennial has an extremely slow growth pace and requires deep shade to thrive. The combination of its near-perfect structure and unusual growth requirements makes it feel unreal.
If your mind isn’t blown already by these mystifying plants, let us know in the comment section, and we’ll make a part 2 to this list, as there are hundreds of other plants in the flora kingdom that seem unearthly!
