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Anastatica hierochuntica, the true rose of Jericho, is a small grey desert annual that curls into a tight ball when dry and reopens with moisture; it is a genus with a single species. The key to growing it is to keep it dry and treat it as a curiosity rather than a conventional garden plant.
Anastatica is a monotypic genus of flowering plants in the family Brassicaceae containing the single species Anastatica hierochuntica or the true rose of Jericho. The plant is a small gray annual herb that rarely grows above 15 centimetres (6 in) high, and bears minute white flowers. It is a capable of hygroscopic expansion and retraction. However, it is not a true resurrection plant, because the plant's dead tissues do not revive and turn green.
This species is not to be confused with Selaginella lepidophylla, also sometimes referred to as "rose of Jericho", or "false rose of Jericho", which is a true resurrection plant that can revive from a dried state and regain the processes of respiration and photosynthesis.
Anastatica is found in arid areas in the Middle East and the Sahara Desert, including parts of North Africa and regions of Iran, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan and Pakistan.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Anastatica by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
