#See each other in the headlines # Why Chitose Orchid can also be called a desert octopus
Chitose orchids grow only in the deserts of Namibia and Angola off the southwest coast of Africa. This plant is mostly distributed in the desert wide
And inside the shallow valley. The stem is very short and thick, about 1 meter in diameter, and only 20~30 cm above the ground. At the top edge of the stem, two huge leaves are born to both sides, each leaf is 2~3 meters long and about 30 cm wide. Once these two leaves grow, they will stay with the entire plant for life. Chitose orchids are dioecious plants that bloom with many spike-like inflorescences on the top edge of the stem. The dried inflorescences have bright red flakes, so they are quite gorgeous, adding a special color to the sand pool. This odd-shaped gymnosperm plant has a long lifespan and generally lives for more than 100 years. According to scientists using carbon-14, a chemical element that can be used to determine the age of objects, the longest-lived plant has lived for 2,000 years, so it is called chitose orchid or chitose leaf. at
Over the course of its long life, the two leaves of Chitose Orchid have been worn out on the gravel ground, but the base of the leaf has continued to grow to compensate for the loss of the leaf margin. Some weather-beaten "elders", the leaves are often scattered into many narrow strips along the parallel veins, and when the wind blows, they scatter and twist, looking at it from afar, like a large octopus crawling on the beach, so people jokingly call this plant "desert octopus".
