Zamioculcas zamiifolia
The only species in its genus, a ground-dwelling aroid of the seasonally dry forests and woodlands of eastern Africa, from Kenya to KwaZulu-Natal. It grows in shade and survives a long rainless winter on thick, water-storing underground rhizomes and succulent leaf stalks. At home it is best treated as a shade-tolerant semi-succulent: water generously in warm months, sparingly in the cool season, and never let it sit wet.
Where it grows wild
The Flora of Mozambique records it in shade in evergreen forest or dense miombo woodland. Other accounts place it in rocky, partly shaded sites in bushland and seasonally dry forest, rooted in humus-filled pockets. It is a terrestrial geophyte. The leaves arise from a thick tuberous rhizome, and the swollen petiole bases also store water. In severe drought plants can shed leaflets and survive on the rhizome.
Mostly lowland: up to about 650 m in Mozambique. Wild GBIF records span 8–1024 m, median 300 m.
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Profiles are drafts built from measured range and climate and from published sources; each section carries its own confidence in the app. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, used under its CC BY-SA 3.0 licence, unmodified.