Story: Neville’s Weird and Wacky Plants #3
Episode: 4
Presenter: Neville Passmore
Air Date: 23rd March 2024

Neville takes us on a tour of his garden, showcasing some of the unusual plants he grows.

• The snake vine is an interesting shaped plant, that is a basket plant and looks quite ugly; it has no leaves and mottled purple, brown stems, with extravagant flowers.
• The corpse flower smells of rotting flesh to attract blowflies for pollination; this flower is the world's largest being 3 metres high and a metre in diameter when it blooms, though it can take up to 10 years to mature before flowering. 
• Next up is a large-scale cactus, which is commonly referred to as a penis cactus, due to its unusual shape.
• Several plants have water storing stems to keep them alive during dry seasons, and the hottentot bread is a climbing plant, with its swollen base edible as a starchy food (but only after treatment).
• The white ghost cactus is called such because of its grey and cream variegated stems, however, is not a cactus but a member of the milkweed family of euphorbias with milky sap.
• The giant dutchman’s pipe vine is a climber with flowers as big as a human head, and when it is in full flower it can have up to 60 blooms on it.
• Finally, Nev has a 25-year-old living plant also part of the euphorbias family, euphorbia lactea f. cristata, and its deformed stems are caused by a virus that remains in the plant and even its cuttings.