welwitschia Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun curious plant of arid regions of southwestern Africa having a yard-high and yard-wide trunk like a turnip with a deep taproot and two large persistent woody straplike leaves growing from the base; living relic of a flora long disappeared; some may be 700-5000 years old
    Welwitschia mirabilis.

WordNet

Wel*witsch"i*a noun
Etymology
NL. So named after the discoverer, Dr. Friedrich Welwitsch.
Definitions
  1. (Bot.) An African plant (Welwitschia mirabilis) belonging to the order Gnetaceæ. It consists of a short, woody, topshaped stem, and never more than two leaves, which are the cotyledons enormously developed, and at length split into diverging segments.

Webster 1913