Caudex Plant Encyclopedia

Called Shiba Queen's Comb in Japanese, with dense yellow flowers and stocky caudex.

The quintessential caudex plant from Madagascar. Round caudex body with yellow flowers. Wild-collected specimens with unique forms command high prices. Seed-growing is also very popular.

A Pachypodium with thick caudex producing multiple branches, yellow flowers and silver trunk.

A small central-northern Madagascan Pachypodium in the P. rosulatum group. Slender spiny branches rise from a swollen trunk, and unusually for this mostly yellow-flowered group it bears ivory flowers.

A spiny caudex plant from Madagascar. Popular as 'Madagascar Palm Tree'.

A Pachypodium with vase-shaped caudex and rosette leaves, relatively easy to grow.

A subspecies of Ficus petiolaris from the dry lands of the Baja California peninsula and Sonora. In Japan it is sold separately from the parent species as "Palmeri", as plants with swollen caudex-like bases.

A Pelargonium with branching tuber and fine leaves creating bonsai-like appearance, winter-growing.

A winter-growing Pelargonium from Namibia that forms a low mound of hundreds of pencil-thin, glossy dark brown branches, branching like coral. After rain it puts out grey-green leaves and white to pale pink flowers.

A tuberous Pelargonium with sweet night fragrance, gnarly tuber and carrot-like leaves.

A climber in the dogbane family from eastern South Africa that sends slender twining stems up from an underground tuber. In English it is known as propeller vine.

A small Thai shrub with twisted branches and pinnate leaves whose base swells into a caudex while young. At dusk the leaflets fold together in pairs like butterfly wings and open again in the morning.

Known in Japan as Tekkoumaru. A South African spurge whose brown stem, patterned with neat spiralling leaf scars like a pine cone, is topped by a tuft of long willow-like leaves. CITES Appendix I since March 2026.

A sesame-family caudex with beautiful pink-purple flowers and compact form.

A fig endemic to Mexico with a yellowish-green trunk and bright green heart-shaped leaves. White tufts of hair in the vein axils on the leaf underside help identify it; in Japan, potted plants with swollen bases are sold as caudiciforms.

A large sesame-family caudex tree with thick trunk and green bark, popular non-Madagascar species.

A deciduous tree from Central America whose smooth green trunk, marbled with grey, swells at the base. From late winter to spring, before the leaves, it opens brush-like flowers of long pink stamens that last a single night.

Known as Brazilian Edelweiss with silver-haired leaves and orange flowers.

A Southeast Asian Stephania that sends vines with round leaves from a large, round brown tuber each year. Cut stems and tubers ooze red sap, which gives it a Thai name containing the word for blood.