Visited the Denver Botanic Gardens and saw a cactus that looked totally fake

I was walking through the greenhouse there last weekend, you know, the big one with the desert plants. I stopped at this one barrel cactus that was just a perfect, bright green ball, no marks or anything. It looked like plastic, the kind you'd buy at a craft store. I actually reached out to touch it (gently, I promise) to check, and it was real and spiky. The label said it was a Ferocactus, about 15 years old. It got me thinking about how some plants are so neat and tidy they don't seem real, while others are all wild and messy. What's the most 'fake-looking' real plant you've ever come across in a garden?

3 comments

3 Comments

gonzalez.grant1mo ago

@nancy820 you're spot on about the spirals. I saw this weird plant at the Huntington Gardens once, it was a crassula that stacked leaves in a perfect square pattern. Looked like a kid's building toy. Had to squat down and squint to see if it was alive. Felt dumb doing it but turns out I wasn't wrong to question it. Another one is those string of pearls things, they hang down like green beads from a Christmas garland. Too perfect.

nancy8202mo ago

Oh man, I totally get that! But honestly, I've always thought the really weird, messy ones look more fake. Like those succulents that grow in a perfect spiral, they seem so unreal they could be from a sci-fi movie.

jennyh552mo ago

Reach out to touch a plant to check if it's real and you know you've found a good one. I mean, some of those succulents look like they were made in a factory. @nancy820 has a point about the spirals, those are wild, but I saw a lithops once that looked exactly like a little pebble with a crack in it. I stared at it for five minutes waiting for it to move or something. Nature is just showing off at that point, making things that look like cheap plastic or weird art projects.