Elephant bush
Portulacaria afra Jacq.
- light
- Full sun
- water
- Little
- tall
- —
- wide
- —
Didiereaceae
Also called Spekboom, Common Spekboom, Elephant Food, Elephant-Food, Elephant's Food
Formerly Claytonia portulacaria, Crassula portulacaria, Crassula portulacastrum
When it flowers
Not known yet in the tropics: too few flowering observations to read a season from.
Read from iNaturalist photographs of it in flower. A month counts at 50% of the best month's flowering share (smoothed over three months) and 10% of its flowering count, from at least 100 flowering observations in the band.
If a child, a pet or anyone may have eaten a plant, contact a doctor or vet straight away, or call the National Poisons Information Centre (AIIMS, New Delhi) on 1800 116 117, free and open 24 hours.
Something wrong with it?About it
- Grows as
- Succulent shrubKew's checklist, not yet checked
- Climate
- SubtropicalKew's checklist, not yet checked
- Wild in
- NW. Kenya, S. Mozambique to S. AfricaKew's checklist, not yet checked
- Light
- Full sun (6 h or more)Read from Wikipedia, one source
- Water
- Little: takes droughtRead from Wikipedia, one source
- Coldest it survives
- -6.7 °C (USDA zone 9a)Read from Wikipedia, one source
Not known yet: height, spread, flowers, heat, hottest it survives.
In other languages (12)
- Spanish
- Árbol africano de la abundancia, Jade
- Chinese
- 樹馬齒莧, 树马齿苋, 马齿苋树
- Czech
- portulakárie africká
- Dutch
- Speckboom
- Japanese
- ギンイチョウ
- Chinese (China)
- 树马齿苋
- Afrikaans
- Spekboom, olifantskos, soetspekboom
- root
- tshirindidza, sidondwane, tshilepwetėe
- German
- Speckbaum
- Russian
- Портулакария африканская
- Danish
- buskportulak
- Thai
- สายรุ้งด่าง
Where this comes from
- iNaturalist, read 2026-10-24, CC0-1.0 (observation counts)
- Wikidata, read 2026-10-24, CC0-1.0
- Kew's checklist, read 2026-10-24, CC-BY-4.0
- Wikipedia, read 2026-10-25, fact, cited
- Wikimedia Commons, read 2026-10-24, CC0
- iNaturalist, read 2026-10-25, CC BY
- iNaturalist, read 2026-10-25, CC BY
- iNaturalist, read 2026-10-25, CC BY-SA
- 3D model: Portulacaria afra (built for Vanagrha) by Vanagrha, own
A fact “checked by a majority of its sources” was settled by a vote of the pages it was read from, not by a person reading it; one marked “one source” rests on that page alone. Anything else not marked checked has not been checked yet. Where nothing is known, the page says so rather than guess.