Topic summary
Succulent plants
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Succulent plant.
Definition
Some who grow succulents as a hobby may use the term in a different way from botanists. In horticultural use, the term succulent regularly excludes cacti. For example, Jacobsen's three volume Handbook of Succulent Plants does not include cacti. Many books covering the cultivation of these plants include "cacti (cactus) and succulents" as the title or part of the title. In botanical terminology, cacti are succulents, but not the reverse, as many succulent plants are not cacti. Cacti form a monophyletic group and apart from one species are native only to the New World, the Americas, but through parallel evolution similar looking plants in completely different families like the Apocynaceae evolved in the Old World.