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.
Tachigali versicolor
Tachigali versicolor or the suicide tree is a species of tree found from Costa Rica to western Colombia. It is monocarpic, flowering only once before dying, which gives rise to its common name of the "suicide tree".
Leaf cutter ants do not harvest the leaves of the suicide tree, presumably because the leaves contain anti-fungal chemicals which would kill the fungus they depend on to digest leaves.
Indigenous people in the Amazon basin use an extract of the tree to treat fungal skin infections and it is also used as timber.
Tachigali beaurepairei · Tachigali densiflora · Tachigali denudata · Tachigali hypoleuca · Tachigali pilgeriana · Tachigali tessmannii · Tachigali vulgaris · Tachigali
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Tachigali versicolor by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
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.
