9/7/2015 It is like a glob of greenish goo lying on the desert. Its name is llareta or Yareta. Even though it grows from taproot and is from the carrot and parsley family, but you don’t expect the leaves are soft to touch. Llareta is a perennial evergreen plant and it stays leafy all year long. The plant’s canopy is made up of thousands of really small leaves, or rosettes, at the end of the stem. Its leaves are so compact that you can jump up and down on it, and you will not fall through the canopy, not even sink by a little. Why it is so compact might be due to it only grows approximately 1.5 centrimeters (15mm) per year. Some of them are around 40 feet in perimeter. By judging the size of the plant, it is believed to be one of the oldest living plants on the planets, and is estimated over 3,000 years old. That means it started growing even before the recorded history began. It is also believed that the more compact it is, the more successful it protects itself against the grazing from the native viscacha, a long-tailed rabbit-like rodent. Where can it be found? It lives in high altitude of 3200 to 4500 along Andes in South America, where there’s a lot of sunlight and solar radiation during the day, while near freezing temperature at night. Its flowers are pink or lavender in color and it is pollinated by inserts. It is compact, dried and woody, therefore it can be used it for fuel for cooking. The tea made of its leave is believed help in controlling diabetes. There is a fear that this plant will become extinct in near future because it takes a lot of time to grow.