Elephant bush (Portulacaria afra)
Description
Portulacaria afra is a two-hearted plant species described by Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin. Portulacaria afra is part of the genus Portulacaria and the Didiereaceae family. No subspecies are listed in the Catalog of Life. It is a soft-wooded, semi-evergreen upright shrub or small tree, usually 2.5–4.5 metres (8–15 ft) tall. Similar in appearance to the unrelated "jade plant" Crassula ovata (family Crassulaceae), P. afra has smaller and rounder pads and more compact growth (shorter internodal spaces, down to 1.5 mm). It is much hardier, faster growing, more loosely branched, and has more limber tapering branches than Crassulaonce established. Within the genus Portulacaria, it has been shown to be an outlier, relatively unrelated to the other species in the genus, which are all restricted to small ranges in the arid far west of Southern Africa.
Taxonomic tree
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Domain: Eukarya
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Kingdom: Plantae
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Phylum: Magnoliophyta
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Class: Magnoliopsida
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Order: Caryophyllales
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Family: Didiereaceae
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Genus: Portulacaria
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