Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

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.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Montrouziera cauliflora

Montrouziera cauliflora
Photo: Missori patrick, CC BY-SA 3.0

Montrouziera cauliflora, the giant Houp tree, is a very large forest tree endemic to New Caledonia, reaching up to 30 m tall with a straight trunk. It is not a plant for home growing; the key to its survival is intact moist evergreen forest.

Family
Clusiaceae (Clusi family)
Grows as
Tree
Light
Part shade
Water
Needs consistently moist conditions typical of its native wet forest.
Soil
Occurs on all soil types in its native range.
Temperature
Wet tropical climate, roughly 20–30 °C; not suited to frost.
Edible
Yes, some parts
Native range
New Caledonia
Climate
wet tropical

About

Montrouziera cauliflora, the giant Houp tree, is a species of flowering plant in the family Clusiaceae. It is found only in New Caledonia, and is one of the largest trees in the seasonal tropical forests there. It is found in moist evergreen dense forest of low and medium elevation (between 200 and 1100 m) on all types of soil. The tree has a straight trunk, slightly conical, without buttresses but with a slightly wider base, up to 30 m high and 3 m in diameter (bigger trees are often hollow), with branches protruding horizontally. Houp trees make fruit but it is not edible by humans. Damage causes the bark to exude a yellow resin, thick and sticky, with no peculiar smell. The bark is dark gray or reddish for individuals in very dense forest, with deep vertical cracks.

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Montrouziera cauliflora 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.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…