Named after an elusive monster from Lewis Carrol’s ‘The Hunting of the Snark’, the Boojum is definitely on the more bizarre end of plantlife. Found exclusively on the mid-third of the Baja Peninsula and a small area on the coast of Sonora, Mexico, this tree-like succulent has a water-storing trunk and an array of spiny branches with tiny leaves. In Carrol’s poem, anyone who looks at the boojum disappears. Thankfully, that’s not the case with this succulent, but you will be left scratching your head as to why it looks like a hairy, upside-down carrot.

Given the right conditions (granite or volcanic soils with coastal fog), the Boojum can grow up to 20 metres tall in the wild. The tallest Boojum recorded was 24 metres tall. Or, was that a snark?