Plants from areas with less than 100 mm (4 inches) of rain each year are grown in this house demonstrating how plants have evolved to adapt to cope with environmental conditions that would kill us in just a few hours. In the centre of the House the larger cacti and succulents include the American cactus Cereus peruvianus and the African Euphorbia abyssinica showing convergent evolution. These two botanically different genera growing in different continents have arrived independently at the same solution of how to survive in the desert.