The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Ehretia rigida
Also called Cape Lilac, Puzzlebush
Puzzle bush (Ehretia rigida) is a small, multi-stemmed, deciduous tree or shrub from southern Africa, with a tangled, rigid branch habit that gives it its name. It is a hardy plant that is grown mostly as a garden or landscape specimen, and it needs free-draining soil and sun.
Ehretia rigida (puzzle bush, also deurmekaarbos in Afrikaans = "confused/tangled bush"), is a small, multi-stemmed tree with a tangled growth habit belonging to the family Ehretiaceae. It occurs over a wide range of habitat throughout the eastern part of South Africa, and in Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
The species is deciduous, hardy and normally grows to about 5 meters tall. Branches are quite rigid, hence its specific name. Leaves are in tufts, leathery and rough with adpressed minute barbs along the margins. Almost invariably there are small pockets of hairs or acarodomatia, providing a refuge for mites in the axils of veins on the underside of the leaves. Bark is smooth and uniformly ash-grey, becoming rough on older stems.
Ehretia cymosa · Scorpionbush · Native Willow · Rotula aquatica
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Ehretia rigida 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.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
