By SEAN THOMAS

Last updated at 09:10 29 May 2007

They say the Chelsea Flower Show has been particularly innovative this year. Designer roof gardens, Norwegian science parks, even an astronaut's allotment - they've all won prizes and plaudits.

You may even have been busy this Bank Holiday, braving the wind and rain, to give your own garden a modernist makeover.

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But it's a fair bet that even the most cutting- edge gardener would find it hard to include the outrageous specimen I'm seeking.

Because right now I'm striding across the dunes of Namibia's Skeleton Coast, surrounded by mile after mile of barren wasteland, on the hunt for the word's ugliest plant.

And I'm hoping I'm not too late, because welwitschia is fast disappearing from the great Namib Desert of southern Africa.

If you've never heard of welwitschia, you're probably not alone.

Despite its unrivalled status as the most hideous speciclungmen in the plant kingdom, it gets relatively little attention from conservationists.

The reason is obvious. When it comes to highlighting the plight of species facing extinction, it tends to be the more glamorous or endearing of the world's threatened natural wonders that enjoy all the fuss.

The giant panda, the Siberian tiger, mountain gorillas: these are the celebs of the ecological cause.

But what happens when an ugly and hard-to-love plant is under similar threat? The silence is deafening.

Which is a shame, because while welwitschia is certainly the most godawful mess to look at, it is nonetheless a truly remarkable species.

For a start, and uniquely in the plant kingdom, it produces just two leaves - but each one can be up to 80 yards long.

These enormous green fronds coil out and around each other like diseased dragons' tongues, to resemble a mass of cactus-like projections, ending in a sunbleached grey frizzle.

The whole plant can be 20ft wide and 6ft tall, with roots going down another 6ft.

Some people think welwitschia is actually a semi- submerged tree: a conifer that buries itself in the sand, perhaps to escape the catcalls of derision at its horrendous looks.

But welwitschia isn't merely grotesque. It is also poisonous to most animals, except for the black rhino.

Its toxic labyrinth of leaves boasts just one real inhabitant, the pyrrhocorrid bug.

This beetle is vernacularly known as the Pushmepullyou - because its ceaseless back-to-back copulation makes it look like a miniature version of the two-headed fictional beast from the Dr Dolittle books.

But perhaps most astonishingly of all is the welwitschia's longevity. It can live for more than 2,000 years, making it one of the most pensionable organisms on Earth.

That means there are welwitschias around today that were first showing their ugly little tendrils when Jesus was a boy.

Welwitschia's scientific "history" is almost as intriguing. The plant was discovered by the Austrian physician, and failed theatre critic, Friedrich Welwitsch, who was trekking across the Namib Desert in 1859.

So overcome was the good Doktor by his find that he knelt down next to the hideous plant and simply gawped for hours.

Once he had recovered from this shocking encounter, Welwitsch sent a sample of his discovery to Sir Joseph Hooker, Regius Director of Kew Gardens.

Hooker immediately said of the organism: "It is without question the most wonderful plant ever brought to this country, and one of the ugliest."

When he had finished insulting the new species, Hooker decided to give the plant its official Latin name: welwitschia mirabilis.

The first part was obviously in honour of Dr Welwitsch, the second part - mirabilis - was a tribute to the plant's miraculous and unique qualities.

But naming this wallflower of wallflowers was just the beginning. It also had to be classified.

Because it was so different from other gymnosperms - a species of related plant - welwitschia was placed in its own family, like an unwanted orphan.

It does share a kinship with two other plant families, but the connections between them are remote.

These days, welwitschia is thought to be a living fossil, a relic from the Jurassic era, when gymnosperms dominated the Earth.

Apparently, most of these plants died out or evolved, but welwitschia on to its way of life, like an aged aunt pickled in gin.

Experts believe that the plant endured because of its harsh desert setting. In an arid landscape, which has grown even more hostile over the millennia, less determined plants simply gave up or moved on.

By contrast, leathery old welwitschia has refused to admit defeat.

But how does it survive in this severe environment? Again, it is only thanks to another natural wonder. The Skeleton Coast is the seaward strip of the Namib Desert - one of the oldest and driest deserts in the world.

Whole years can pass without a single shower.

And when it gets warm, it gets really warm: ground temperatures of an egg-frying 65 centigrade are not unknown - making life impossible, you might think, even for the most cussed lump of green frizzle.

So how does welwitschia survive? The answer lies in the fogs that constantly envelop the region.

Although the Namib Desert is exceptionally hot and dry, the coast here is cold, because of the Benguela sea current, which brings frigid water from the Antarctic.

This collision of desert heat and oceanic chill produces vast, soggy mists.

This is the water that nourishes welwitschia. Those hideous leaves, those leprous stamens, those snaking and sinister taproots, might seem repellent to us, but they all serve the purpose of sucking moisture out of the foggy air.

Welwitschia is nothing if not practical. Indeed, the plant is just one of a number of peculiar-species that live in this extreme neighbourhood, which is the very reason that I have been drawn here.

As an author and travel writer, I have long been fascinated by the more outlandish places on the planet.

Over the past few years, I have searched for the real Garden of Eden in Turkey, I have eaten fried tarantulas in Cambodia, and I've tracked the descendants of the real Lady Dracula in Transylvania.

Now I've come to Namibia on a pilgrimage to see, first hand, the strange and wonderful species it is home to.

As I walk across the wilderness, I'm also looking out for a beetle which stands on its head (so the dew can condense on its thorax) and a kind of lion that can navigate through fog.

There's also a species of flower that looks like a pebble, a lichen that can change colour in seconds, elephants that like to bodysurf down sand dunes, and a giant spider, the White Lady of the Namib, that does a strange jittery dance and lives off geckoes.

But most of all, if I'm honest, I want to see welwitschia. Can this freaky tree really be as ugly as they say?

Kneeling on the sunburnt rocks, I scan the hot, misty horizon. Nothing doing. It looks like I may be out of luck.

Changing climate and human pressure are diminishing the unique habitat where welwitschias thrive. Some think the plant might disappear in a few decades.

But I'm in luck. As I round a rocky outcrop, I find what I have come for. And wow - they're right - it really sucks.

Up close, welwitschia looks like the wretched offspring of a Triffid and a collapsed Irish rugby scrum. Sprawled messily across the sand, it has an air of bashful sadness.

The funny thing is, the more I stare at the mess of sunscorched leaves in front of me, the more I like it.

Against all the odds, in one of the most inhospitable place on Earth, it has survived and adapted.

And perhaps above all, it is a triumphant counterblast against a world that prizes beauty above all things.