Oldest Houseplant in the World? (2024)

FAQs

Oldest Houseplant in the World? ›

It is a giant cycad or Encephalartos altensteinii, native to the Eastern Cape province of South Africa and brought to the UK in 1775 by the botanist Francis Masson. In 1848, the Palm House was completed at Kew Gardens and this giant cycad was moved there.

The world's oldest potted plant is a prickly cycad (Encephalartos altensteinii), which was brought from South Africa to the UK and planted in 1775.

Rubber tree plants (Ficus elastica) are known to live for over 100 years in their habitat of southeast Asia, but generally only about 10 as houseplants. Growing to a height of about 10 feet (3 m), rubber tree plants thrive in bright, indirect light and well-draining soil.

Individual plant specimens

Methuselah, a Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) in the White Mountains of California, has been measured by ring count to be 4,855 years old.

Although many suggest the average lifetime of an indoor plant is between 2-5 years, most die much sooner because of improper care. In theory, house plants can live forever with proper care and the ability to keep growing. Some plants live decades or centuries depending on how they are cared for.

In eastern California, a Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) known as Methuselah has long been considered Earth's oldest living thing. According to tree-ring data, Methuselah is 4,853 years old — meaning it was well established by the time ancient Egyptians built the pyramids at Giza.

One of the plants with the shortest lifespan is the Annual Meadowgrass, scientifically known as Poa annua. It is a common grass species that is often considered a weed. As an annual plant, its life cycle typically spans just one year. During this time, it germinates, grows, produces seeds, and then dies.

Fossilized specimens of the Montsechia vidalii were discovered in the Pyrenees in Spain more than 100 years ago, but an international team of paleobotanists recently analyzed them and discovered that at around 130 million years old, it's the oldest flowering plant yet discovered.

What plants live forever? ›

Hens-and-chicks (Sempervivum sp.) is also sometimes called a live forever plant. Both this plant and the fall flowering sedum are members of the Crassulaceae plant family, a group of plants well adapted to drought prone regions.

Perhaps the most famously lethal on our list is Atropa belladonna, the aptly named Deadly Nightshade. This toxic plant belongs to the same family as tomatoes, potatoes and aubergines, and can be found across Europe, including in Britain, as well as North Africa, Western Asia and some parts of the USA and Canada.

Trees and shrubs and fleshy vines and bulbous plants are pretty much immortal by human standards. There are trees which are two thousand years old. Bulbs die, but they divide themselves clonally and regrow pretty endlessly.

Various fascinating plants have become extinct due to natural and human-related causes. Some plants that have disappeared over the centuries include Strychnos electri, the St. Helena olive and silphium.

W. mirabilis, sometimes referred to as a living fossil, is the only living genus of the family Welwitschiaceae—making it what is known as a monotypic genus of plant. Some specimens are thought to be over 1000 years old with the oldest living W. mirabilis believed to be nearly 2000 years old!

The first recorded houseplant was in the 600's BC in the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh, created by the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib (previously/erroneously called the Hanging Gardens of Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar II), wanting to make his foreign wife feel more at home, commissioned a giant hanging garden inside his ...

The Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva) has been deemed the oldest tree in existence, reaching an age of over 5,000 years old. The bristlecone pine's success in living a long life can be attributed to the harsh conditions it lives in.