Some rare plant species take years to bloom. Are they worth the wait? Find out!
While most plants generously display their blooms annually and throughout growing seasons, others take decades. Some plants take years and even decades to blossom, offering a once-in-a-blue-moon experience. If you are a patient gardener and like growing unique flowering plants, check out these plants.
This plant, belonging to the cactus family, appears like a dead bush for 364 days. It grows in parts of western Texas and southern Arizona. But on one summer night, trumpet-shaped flowers open up. The plant grows creamy-white blooms that are nearly 8 inches wide.
The Madagascar palm grows in enormous sizes and perishes after fruiting, and flowers bloom once in 100 years. This tree is unique because it was discovered in 2008. It blossomed so rarely that nobody until 2008 noticed that the Madagascar palm was different from other known species of palm.
This tree shares common characteristics with Asian palms found nearly 6,000 kilometres away. Some scientists believe the Madagascar palms have been growing on Madagascar since it separated from the Indian sub-continent 80 million years ago.
The corpse flower emanates an unpleasant odour but the scent lures the carrion beetle—the primary pollinator of the plant. The flower is native to central Sumatra’s rainforest and blooms once in 8-20 years. The blooming event is rare but when the petals open up, they grow five feet wide with only one dark violet petal underneath a central stalk.
The kurinji plant is native to the southern region of India, and when the flowers blossom, vast expanses of hillside turn bluish purple. However, one can witness this once every 12 years. The kurinji plant’s reproductive phase synchronises owing to a unique survival mechanism, as a result, new plants flood the area to outnumber predators like wildebeests.
Found in Bolivia and Peru, the Queen of the Andes blossoms once in 80 to 100 years, putting up a spectacular show with a tall flower spike, reaching almost 30 feet high. The stalk of the plant comprises 30,000 individual blooms and the plant perishes after flowering.
These giant trumpet-shaped, white-and-purple flowers grow from the plant (10-foot-tall) after almost seven years. When it is not the blooming year, the plant displays glossy green leaves in the Himalayas. After bearing flowers, the parent plant perishes but it leaves behind many smaller bulbs.
The name of this plant may be misleading because it typically blossoms once between 10 to 25 years. The succulent is native to Mexico and produces a rosette that can grow as wide as 10 feet, comprising grey-green, thick leaves with spines on the tips. A single stalk of flower grows from the plant’s base and reaches a height of 30 feet, bearing greenish-yellow blooms before the plant perishes.
These 16-foot-tall blooms rise above the tropical palm plant and are native to India and Sri Lanka. Talipot palms can sustain up to 75 to 80 years, but the flowers bloom only once.
One needs to be extremely patient to witness this plant bloom, as the flowers show up once in their lifetime and can be anytime between 30 to 80 years. However, witnessing the plant bear flowers is a bittersweet experience, as it implies the plant’s end is near. It spends all of its stored energy to bear fruits the size of a golf ball, which drop on the ground just before the plant perishes.
If you think these plants are worth the wait, grow them in your backyard and sit tight.
