Caudex Plant Encyclopedia

A winter-growing Othonna with a woolly, many-headed caudex bearing rosettes of stiff, chalky grey-green leaves with a raised net of veins. Small white marginal teeth, often pointing backwards, give it its name.

Known in Japan as Kareno-aoi. A winter-growing southern African Pelargonium with thick, knobbly grey-green succulent stems and soft, finely pinnately divided leaves. It drops its leaves and rests in summer.

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 small, winter-growing Tylecodon that raises many pale, slender, bonsai-like branches from a slightly swollen base. Its branches photosynthesize through their bark and can grow with only microscopic leaves, a rare trait.

A winter-growing Tylecodon whose spent flower stalks persist and harden into a finely branched, silvery thorny net that envelops the plant. It has a squat trunk and fleshy leaves at the branch tips.

A winter-growing Tylecodon whose thick stem and branches are densely covered with warty, yellow-green persistent leaf bases. Narrow leaves cluster at the branch tips, and dangling yellow-green, urn-shaped flowers appear in the leafless summer.