50 Fun Facts About Succulents

Lotions containing the clear gel of Aloe vera, a succulent from Arabia, are widely used to soothe which skin complaint?

Sunburn is the complaint most people reach for aloe to calm, though studies disagree on how much it helps. The gel cannot protect skin from burning again.

Which spirit, named after a town in Jalisco, may be made from only one kind of agave, the blue Weber variety?

Tequila is a slow crop: a blue agave grows for years before its heart is cut out, baked and fermented, and each plant can be harvested only once.

Which Christmas houseplant belongs to Euphorbia, a genus that also holds many spiny succulents mistaken for cacti?

Poinsettia hides a second surprise: its red 'petals' are really coloured leaves called bracts, which only change colour after weeks of long, dark nights.

Crassula ovata, a tree-like succulent with shiny oval leaves, is also known as the money tree and by which other name?

Jade plant earns its tree-like look slowly: the trunk thickens and turns brown with age, which has made it a favourite subject for indoor bonsai.

Agaves and yuccas, for all their sword-like leaves, sit in a family the APG system names after which vegetable?

Asparagus gives its name to the family Asparagaceae, which swallowed the old agave family in a 2009 reshuffle and also takes in bluebells and hostas.

Sempervivum, a frost-hardy succulent whose Latin name means always alive, is commonly sold under which farmyard name?

Hen and chicks describes how the plant spreads: each parent rosette, the hen, surrounds itself with a brood of smaller rosettes, and each one can be split off to grow alone.

The trimmed heart of an agave, baked to make spirits, is called a piña, the Spanish word for which fruit?

Pineapple is what the heart resembles once a harvester has sliced off every spiky leaf, and a single one can weigh as much as a grown adult.

Stapelia, an African succulent with large hairy flowers, smells of rotting meat to attract which pollinators?

Flies are fooled so completely that blow flies often lay their eggs on the bloom, a trick that has earned Stapelia the name carrion flower.

Aloe vera was among the houseplants tested for cleaning indoor air in a 1989 study led by which agency?

NASA was hunting for ways to freshen the air inside sealed habitats. An ordinary building would need a jungle of at least ten plants per square metre to match its own ventilation.

Houseleeks were long planted on which part of a house, a custom Charlemagne endorsed, to ward off thunderstorms?

The roof is written into the plant's scientific name: Sempervivum tectorum means the houseleek of rooftops, and the custom goes back to Roman times.

Agave americana, which actually lives for only 10 to 30 years, is misleadingly known by which common name?

Century plant flowers just once, at the very end of its life, sending up a blossoming stalk that can tower 8 metres before the rosette dies.

Which West African houseplant with stiff, upright, sharp-edged leaves was once a source of fibre for making bowstrings?

Snake plant leaves are so tough that their fibres were once twisted into bowstrings, which gave the species yet another name: viper's bowstring hemp.

Lithops, tiny southern African succulents that hide from grazing animals among gravel, go by which nickname?

Living stones fooled even the explorer who first described them: in 1811 William Burchell found one only because he bent to pick up a curiously shaped pebble.

Flaming Katy, a Kalanchoe widely sold as a flowering houseplant, grows wild in the cool mountains of which large island?

Madagascar holds about 60 of the roughly 125 Kalanchoe species, and its cool mountain plateaus, not a hot desert, are the natural home of flaming Katy.

The Succulent Karoo, home to a third of the world's succulent species, runs from South Africa into which neighbour?

Namibia shares the desert's unlikely water supply: the cold Benguela Current just offshore rolls frequent fogs over the coastal strip where the plants grow.

Many succulents open their pores only after dark to take in which gas, storing it as acid until morning?

Carbon dioxide gathered in the cool of night lets the plant keep its pores shut through the heat of the day, so far less water escapes.

African euphorbias and American cacti look alike without being closely related, a classic case of which process?

Convergent evolution handed two unrelated families the same drought kit of swollen green stems and sharp spines, which is why euphorbias are so often mistaken for cacti.

Euphorbia succulents, unlike the cacti they resemble, bleed which poisonous white fluid when a stem is cut?

Latex evolved to put off browsing animals, and it works on gardeners too: a splash on the skin or in an eye can cause painful inflammation.

Yellowing leaves that turn soft and mushy are a warning that a potted succulent is suffering from which care mistake?

Overwatering drowns the roots: waterlogged soil holds too little oxygen, so they die and rot. The cure is to let the pot dry out completely between drinks.

A potted succulent that stretches into tall, pale, lanky growth is showing that it needs more of what?

Light is what the plant is reaching for: rosettes even flatten their leaves to catch more of it, and indoor succulents do best with ten or more bright hours a day.

Many succulents multiply by sprouting small daughter plants at their base, offsets that US gardeners call what?

Pups are virtually complete plants made without any seed, so each one is a clone of its parent that can be cut away and potted up alone.

Which Kalanchoe, also called the alligator plant, is named for the rows of baby plantlets along its leaf edges?

Mother of thousands drops plantlets that have already grown roots while still on the leaf, and every part of the plant contains a potent toxin.

Sedum morganianum, a Mexican succulent with trailing stems of blue-green leaves, is named after which animal's tail?

Burro, or donkey, tail sheds its leaves at the gentlest brush, but the loss is no disaster: each fallen leaf can root where it lands and grow a new plant.

Curio rowleyanus, a trailing South African succulent in the daisy family, is best known by which common name?

String of pearls carries leaves the size and shape of small peas on stems that can trail for nearly a metre, and it was long filed under Senecio, the ragworts.

Kalanchoe tomentosa, with velvety silver-green leaves rimmed in brown, is sold under the name of which animal?

Panda plant owes its soft coat to a dense felt of fine silvery hairs, and its dark-edged leaves have earned it a second nickname: chocolate soldier.

Haworthiopsis attenuata, a small succulent whose leaves carry bands of white bumps, is named after which animal?

Zebra haworthia wears its stripes on both faces of every leaf, the detail that separates it from a look-alike cousin whose upper leaf surface is smooth.

Euphorbia obesa, a round, spineless succulent prized by collectors, is nicknamed after the ball of which sport?

Baseball plant grows so slowly, and sets only two or three seeds in each pod, that poaching has left it endangered in the wild.

Euphorbia milii, a popular houseplant with small red blooms, takes its common name from which biblical object?

Crown of thorns reached France in 1821 thanks to Baron Milius, the governor of Réunion whose name it carries; legend ties the plant to the crucifixion.

A cultivar of Crassula ovata with odd tubular, red-tinged leaves is named after which Lord of the Rings character?

Gollum has a sister cultivar named Hobbit, and the pair's strange tube-shaped leaves have also been nicknamed ogre's ears and ET's fingers.

Spekboom, a small-leaved South African succulent shrub, takes its English name from which large animals that feed on it?

Elephants are only one of its fans: spekboom, or elephant bush, also feeds black rhinos, and it puts on growth faster than the local rainfall would seem to allow.

Roasting agave hearts in earthen pits of hot rocks gives which Mexican spirit its distinctive smoky flavour?

Mezcal can be made from any type of agave, cooked underground for about three days. Despite the similar name, it contains no mescaline.

Which stiff fibre, crushed from the leaves of an agave, is traditionally made into rope, twine and dartboards?

Sisal takes its name from the Spanish colonial port in Yucatán from which the fibre was first shipped out to the rest of the world.

Which milky, sour drink, held sacred in pre-Columbian times, is made by fermenting the sap of the agave?

Pulque is brewed rather than distilled, and before the Spanish conquest only certain classes of people were permitted to drink it.

Blue agave, when a farmer lets it flower, is pollinated by the greater long-nosed species of which animal?

Bat visits are rare on plantations, where workers trim away the flower stalk so that the agave keeps ripening instead of blooming and dying early.

Poachers have stripped wild Dudleya succulents from the ocean bluffs of which US state to ship them to East Asia?

California made poaching Dudleya illegal in 2021, and nurseries are fighting the smugglers too, by flooding the market with cultivated plants.

The ashes of Salicornia, a salt-marsh succulent eaten as samphire, were once a key ingredient for making which material?

Glass made with the plant's soda-rich ashes gave Salicornia its English name, glasswort, which has been in use since the 1500s.

San hunters hollowed out the tubular branches of Aloidendron dichotomum, a southern African tree aloe, to carry what?

Arrows carried this way gave the plant its English name, the quiver tree; the San themselves know it as choje.

Aloe polyphylla, whose leaves grow in a striking five-armed spiral, is found wild only in which mountain kingdom?

Lesotho's spiral aloe lives on grassy slopes more than 2,000 metres up in the Drakensberg, with about 21 leaves in every full turn of its spiral.

Most species of Aeonium, the rosette succulents known as tree houseleeks, are native to which Atlantic archipelago?

Canary Islands species make up most of the roughly 35 kinds of Aeonium, though a handful of outliers grow as far away as Ethiopia and Yemen.

Echeveria honours Atanasio Echeverría, who joined a royal expedition across New Spain in which role?

Botanical artist Echeverría was still an art student in Mexico City when he was picked for the 1787 expedition, and the genus was named in his honour in 1828.

The word succulent, applied to both fleshy plants and tender steaks, comes from the Latin succus, meaning what?

Juice, or sap, is what swells these plants: the fleshiest parts of some succulents are as much as 90 to 95 per cent water.

The species name in Aloe vera comes from the Latin word verus, which has what meaning?

True is the meaning, and the plant needs the label: it is only one of several hundred species of aloe.

Which household word do botanists use for the translucent leaf-tip patches of Lithops and other half-buried succulents?

Windows let the sun's rays reach green tissue hidden inside the leaf, so the plant can stay almost entirely below the soil, out of the drying wind and heat.

Which small bumps, the points from which spines and flowers grow, mark out a cactus from look-alike succulents?

Areoles are branches shrunk almost to nothing, which is why new arms on a branching cactus sprout from exactly the same spots as its spines.

Carpobrotus edulis, a South African creeper now smothering coasts far from home, goes by which frosty name?

Ice plant, also called sour fig, forms vast single-species carpets that crowd out threatened native plants from Australia to the Mediterranean.

Which term covers every plant adapted to dry habitats, whether a succulent or a species with small leaves that roll up?

Xerophytes and succulents overlap without matching: one fleshy species, Crassula helmsii, has given up drought altogether and lives in water.

Which pests show up as white cottony masses along the stems and leaf veins of succulents and other houseplants?

Mealybugs can be beaten without a spray can: dabbing each cottony clump with a swab dipped in rubbing alcohol is a standard cure.

Before planting a succulent cutting, gardeners leave the cut end to dry until it forms which protective layer?

A callus seals the wound, so the cutting cannot soak up too much moisture and rot before it has grown roots of its own.

Agave syrup, a sweetener made commercially from several agave species, owes most of its sweetness to which sugar?

Fructose makes up about 56 per cent of blue agave syrup, released when heat breaks down the long fructan chains the plant stores.

Curio × peregrinus, a trailing hybrid succulent, has curved leaves with two small points that resemble which animals?

Dolphins give the plant a whole pod of trade names, including flying dolphins and dolphin necklace; it is a cross between two other Curio species.