Welwitschia

Welwitschia is a highly unusual desert plant found only in the Namib Desert of Namibia and southern Angola, the sole living species in its genus and family, notable for producing just two enormous, strap-like leaves during its entire lifetime, which grow continuously from the base and become split and tattered over the plant's long life, giving mature specimens a sprawling, almost octopus-like appearance. It grows extremely slowly and is exceptionally long-lived, with some individuals estimated to be well over a thousand years old, surviving in one of the driest environments on Earth partly by drawing moisture from coastal fog in addition to sparse rainfall. Welwitschia is neither a true flowering plant nor a conifer but belongs to an ancient, separate lineage of seed plants, and its cone-like reproductive structures and unique physiology have made it a subject of considerable scientific interest as a living link to an older evolutionary branch of plants.