Plants are some of the most beautiful and abundant things on earth. There is just something so calming about standing in a dense forest taking in all of the amazing trees with their dizzying heights. Plants are not just for show either; they provide much of the oxygen we breathe while we offer them our exhaled carbon dioxide in return. Here is our top 10 list of coolest plants.
10. Aloe Plant
Aloes are succulent plants that need very little attention in the garden and give a nice show whether in bloom or not. Their healing and first aid properties from the semi-sticky fluid within the stems is well known. Aloe has been added to burn-healing products for years which can be taken gingerly from a plant itself.
9. Amorphophallus (Misshapen Penis Plant)
As is normal of this plant family, these species develop an elongate or oval ‘sheath’, which usually envelops the flower itself. The flower can have different colors, but mostly brownish-purple or whitish-green. On the inside, they contain ridges or warts, functioning as insect traps. Despite all of that information that describes the plant itself, it emits a foul odor smelling of rotting fish.
8. Nepenthes (Pitcher Plant)
Pitcher plants are carnivorous plants whose prey-trapping mechanism features a deep cavity filled with liquid known as a ‘pitfall trap’. It has been widely assumed that the various sorts of pitfall trap evolved from rolled leaves, with selection pressure favoring more deeply cupped leaves over evolutionary time. Basically, prey flies or crawls in, and can not possibly get out.
7. Rafflesia arnoldii
Although technically a member of the plant kingdom, Rafflesia challenges traditional definitions of what a plant is because they lack chlorophyll and are therefore incapable of photosynthesis. And according to all accounts of those who have gotten close enough to tell they have an odor similar to a carcass in advanced decomposition. Get one for your home today!
6. Dracunculus vulgaris (Dragon or Voodoo Lily)
The odor that bursts from the flower on the day it opens smells somewhat like rotting meat attracting flies as its chief pollinator, an attribute that needs consideration when you decide where to plant this flower. Fortunately the odor dissipates after the first day, allowing you to enjoy the exotic beauty of this unusual plant! The 10-12 inch flowers range in color from deep maroon to nearly black and last for 7-10 days. The lovely green foliage appears in March but the flowers wait until early May to make its appearance.
5. Sundew
Sundews are found throughout the world. These unique carnivorous plants attract their victims with a glistening morsel of nectar, or so the insect thinks! Once the insect gets stuck, the tendrils will close around the victim to sting and release an enzyme to start the digestion process. These plants make watching the action far easier as well.
4. Hydnora africana
The only portion of Hydnora that appears above the ground is the upper portion of the flower. Most of the flower is below the soil surface. The flower is thick and succulent in texture. The portion of the flower above the ground surface is tubular and has three openings, one of which is shown in the image. These plants are parasitic and emit quite harsh odors. Looks Like Audry 2, huh?
3. Welwitschia mirabilis
An adult welwitschia consists of two leaves, a stem base and roots. That is all! Its two permanent leaves are unique in the plant kingdom. They are the original leaves from when the plant was a seedling, and they just continue to grow and are never shed. They are leathery, broad, strap-shaped and they lie on the ground becoming torn to shreds. The stem is low, woody, hollowed-out, and sturdy. It grows to about 500 mm in height.
2. Stinking Titan Arum (Corpse Flower)
A flower taller than a man, stinking strongly of putrefying roadkill and colored deep burgundy to actually mimic rotting flesh… sounds like something fun to witness, doesn’t it? But Indonesia’s titan arum—or “corpse flower” as known by locals—is a real, if rare, phenomenon, pollinated in the wild by carrion-seeking insects.
1. Venus Fly Trap
The leaves of Venus’ FlyTrap open wide. On the leaves are short, stiff hairs called trigger hairs; when anything stimulates them, the two lobes of the leaf snap shut trapping whatever is inside. The trap will shut in less than a second. When the leaves close over food, the cilia, finger-like projections, keep larger insects inside.
This is a good list but you forgot one… The Robert Plant. The Robert Plant is known to emit a strange noise similar to an animal in heat which helps it to attract a mate.
You missed kids’ favorite plant too. The TickleMe Plant will close its leaves and lower its branches when tickled. My kids at school love growing these! Now you can grow your own from http://www.ticklemeplant.com
hmmm no *****? j/k i just know somebody will call it the coolest plant EVER so i wanted to beat them to the punch
Juggz: hah I was tempted to do my own FP just to get ***** out of the way
Columbo – are you being serious or are you making fun of the Led Zeppelin guy?
this goes to show how bizarre lifeforms can be.
Does someone likes stinky plants that kill?
Columbo: Nicely done! Never crossed my mind! HA!
Feed me Seymour!!
Aloe Plant!? Cool!? Are you serious!? These plants are more common than weeds here in Aruba! Psh! Cool! My ass! Even though they help if you get injured but still!
You should check out the jimsum weed, it makes a rather potent tea.
Jimson Weed is some messed up stuff. Will never take any of it again.
juggz: what does it do?
Somewhere I read that the rafflesia is the biggest flower on earth… To bad it smells like a rotten corpse..
Jamie: I myself have had some bad experiences with it. I tried to cook a paper plate once and almost burnt my house down
luckily my brother was monitoring me lol. But the real problem with it is it causes your body tempature to rise dramatically. It grows in the wild in the part of arizona i used to live in and it is not controlled by any means.
heres a fact sheet on it
http://www.doitnow.org/pages/525.html
Juggz: wow – amazing that it isn’t controlled!
We used to have a plant that grew along my High School running track. Then someone died from it so they finally decided to go dig it up. But they didn’t do a very good job because it had grown back by the next year.
Hey Juggz, I am from Arizona, I live in El mirage about 20 miles west of phoenix.I found out about jimsum back in my highschool days at Wickenburg, some friends drank it in a tea, they said things got really wierd, my friend thought this dude sitting on the couch was his girlfriend and before he knew it he was planting a wet kiss on him. then another friend said the darth vader poster on the wall started to breathe, so he deceided to pee on it.
Coolest list I’ve seen in a while. As for all you guys talking about other cool plants like jimson weed and whatnot, well it’s cool in a different way. I’m sure this just opened up several future lists for that category.
joe: Yah AZ is full of the stuff. My experiences could fill an entire webpage but there were some very funny moments. Not even when i was doing it but others. My brother tried to save me from “weed” people(tumble weeds) that he thought were chasing me, to the point where he jnmped out of the back of a moving truck. His wife, tried to kill me but strangeling me, for no reason and one one trip they threw rice and ramen noodles at me and i thought they were worms and maggots. Those are but a few of my experiences on it.
Juggz: holy crap! I am not ever touching that stuff!
Wise Idea Jamie. Don’t get me wrong here, Ill never do it again, but I would LOVE to watch someone else freak on it.
Yeah, my trippin days are long gone.The only thing I do now is an occasional puff on a bowl of “weedies”and pain pills for my spinal cord injury.
Im voting columbo for best comment ever on listverse
venus fly trap number one? nah. it may say they close in a second but thats probably an extremely fast reaction. i used to have one and whenever it caught a fly it would take at least 5 seconds to actually close
I had a Venus Fly Trap plant when I was a kid. I didn’t have any flies so I fed it raw hamburger. It died shortly after.
It is still a cool plant though.
There are some plants in the Amazon that grow so large that they can eat small rodents and frogs that get trapped in them!
Ha, the thought of someone feeding a plant raw hamburger is quite surreal…
Also, hemp (and its cousin, ***** Sativa) are amazing as well.
The idea of a plant eating meat has always confused me, although I know it probably shouldn’t. I mean, some animals are herbivores, so why can’t a plant be a carnivore? Anyway, does grass count as a plant? My dad has some kind of grass in his yard, no matter how many times it turns all brown and crispy from not watering it, all it takes is a few days of watering to bring it back to life. And I’m talking about months of not watering in the So Cal heat, not just a few days. I can’t remember what kind of grass it is.
want the corpse flower…
What about those cacti that look JUST like rocks? I think those are pretty cool. And just to bring up another hallucinigenic…no salvia? I dunno, I think it would be so hard to make a top 10 list of coolest plants, especially when you consider what makes them cool. Most uses? Maybe the soy plant. Prettiest colors? Most unusual? Still, this is a good list.
And I want to second whoever said that Columbo gets best comment ever…lol
speaking of aloe.. stuff works great, burnt my self in my enviornmental chem class a few years back, they just snipped a leaf off the aloe gave it to me and it worked wonders
Hell yes! I know what I’m giving for christmas this year! >D
#2 actually looks like it’s been photoshopped into the picture.
#1 is awesome though. Had a similar one a few years back, and for a while there was not a single fly in our house.
I can only imagine if the venus fly-trap was 10 times bigger.
The Rose of Jericho is kinda cool too. It’s also called the Resurrection Plant. You can read about it at
http://www.azarius.net/smartshop/fun_stuff/Gadgets/rose_of_jericho/
I bought one for some botany science project thingy when I was a kid. Everyone was amazed at it.
I really want an Amorphophallus plant for my desk at work! When people come over to annoy me with stupid questions, I would pick it up and talk to it. I think that between that, its appearance and the rotten-fish smell that people would start leaving me alone fairly quickly.
Mum brought home a pitcher plant from a primary school fete for $3, down from $8. It loves flies and definitely has a big appetite. One tube is dying but being replaced by others.
It is a Saracenia, subspecies Red Tube. It has red veins on it, and i looked it up on a website, and it described this plant as the “slutty show-off” of the pitcher plants. I have much to look forward to. When it flowers, the yellow funny looking flowers will have the perfume of cat urine.
So, mum brought me home a cheap, red headed, filthy bug-eating harlot, that lives in a peat bog, that will smell of animal ***** when it bares its reproductive parts for me, if i look after it by _not_ feeding it fertilizer or mineral rich water. thanks mum. But i still love it. I’m a sucker for red-heads.
I want to feed it some of those other “herbs” mentioned above, though, to give it a bit of perspective on life.
Wow, the aloe plant made it into the list, this makes me feel bad that we no longer have them on our garden.
What happens when you put your finger in a venus flytrap? Has anyone ever tried it?
Vicky: Fingers are generally bigger than the bugs the plants want to eat (at least this was the case for my venus flytrap house-plants), and putting your finger on its trip-hairs just *****es it off. It will close its mouth out of a reaction (but not strong enough really to even be felt, let alone trap and maim and eat you), and then later become malnourished because /since/ its mouth is closed from the being *****ed off, it’s not open to eat the bugs that are actually there for the eating.
So, long story short, putting your finger in a venus flytrap does more harm to the plant than to you.
On the show Planet Earth there was a spider that lives in the Pitcher Plant. It attatches itself with a ‘safety line’ to the top and reels itself down in the liquid to grab prey. It’s hair traps an air bubble and it is able to breath and stay under the water for quite some time.
I’ve always thought baobabs looked pretty neat. Oh, to have a tea party in their branches…
I think that the psychadelic plants of the world should punctuate this list, being that their ingestion allows people to venture to unexplored areas of the human consciousness without the years of spiritual practice that it would normally take. eg. ibogaine, psilocybin mushroom,peyote, the ayahuasca vine,*****.
Kudzu, once its there, itll never ever ever ever leave…. ever…
I’m just wondering…
If you put your finger inside a Venus fly trap, will the flower close and devour your finger?
Oh… my mistake, someone already asked the same question!
But still, cool list!
i think this list should also include selaginella bryopteris. Its a resurrection plant. It was a big amazement for me in my schooldays.
These are sooo cool and i really want to see these in person. I hope you find some even cooler species of plants.
Holy *****, nr 7 is a pokemon!
It really looks like a pokemon I’ve seen xD
gotta catch it
The venus fly trap is indigenous only to about a 100 mile radius of where I live. When it was first observed, it was considered such a pecularity that it was sent to England and was considered the first “proof” that there existed carnivorous plants. North Carolina USA has quite a few unusual plants. It’s always been very interesting to me….Pitcher plants.lady slippers……….some of the blooms are outstanding
Wheres Canabis? Or Opium? They should be there
Kids favorite plant is now the TickleMe Plant as seen in museums or on line at http://www.TickleMePlant.com Used to be called the sensitive plant now made cool and they have easy to grow kits. Growing a TickleMe Plant from seeds and watching it MOVE and close its leaves when tickled is waaaaaaaay Cool!
I checked out the TickleMe Plant. I vote for that go TickleMe Plant..did you see the time lapse do the pink flowers at http://www.ticklemeplant.com If you love plants and nature these guys really show you how to share it with your family and friends Wouldn’t want my kids to miss this
ummm you made a mistake a venus fly trap does not close in less than a second it takes longer than minutes to close =/
What is cool about the TickleMe Plant is after the leaves close you don’t have to wait weeks before it opens like with a venus flytrap. The leaves open wide in less then 2O minutes plus it wont hurt a fly.
penis plant lol!
8. Nepenthes (Pitcher Plant) also known as monkey pot (periuk kera) in malaysia and indonesia.
TickleMe Plants rule..
as far as being the coolest and most entertaining plant that can be grown indoors year round. The leaves fold and even the entire branch can fall down when Tickled! It’s a must see must grow plant. Here is the video that got me hooked
http://www.ticklemeplant.com/video/video.htm
Columbo…CLASSIC!
I remember when I was a kid that there was some kind of plant that if you broke it in half…on the root…it was blood red. We used to do that all the time and rub it on ourselves until one day one of my friends rubbed it all over there arm and went screaming into their house to their mother…mom FREAKED out! Does anyone know the name of that plant? I live about 20 minutes east of Cleveland in Ohio.
Thanks!
These Plants Are So Cool Man…All So Cool!I Wish I Can Buy The Seeds And Grow Them…Haha!