This one looks like it was put together by someone who had never seen a plant before. A hornwort that embraces its own weirdness. The thallus is not flat and rosette-forming like other hornworts. It is thick, wrinkled, and blob-like – a small, green, bumpy cushion that resembles a piece of chewed gum or a deformed potato. The surface is rough and lumpy, with no clear shape or pattern. A plant that looks like a mistake. From this irregular base, sporadic, short, dark green horns rise at odd angles – some straight, some curved, some leaning to one side. They scatter across the thallus like an afterthought, as if the plant forgot where it was supposed to put them. It is the hornwort of haphazard design, assembled without a plan by a committee that could not agree. A plant that cannot decide where to put its horns. This is the strangest-looking hornwort in New Zealand. The blob-like, wrinkled thallus is unlike any other, and the sporadic, irregular horns give it a chaotic, unfinished appearance. It embraces its own weirdness rather than apologising for it. The thallus is thick and fleshy, pale green to yellowish-green, often with a brownish tint, and grows 1 to 3 centimetres across. The sporophytes are short – only 1 to 2 centimetres tall – and emerge at irregular intervals. Reproduction happens by spores released from those horn-like capsules. To find phymatoceros hornwort is to spot a small, green, blob-like cushion on damp soil that looks like a piece of chewed gum. The damp soil is lumpy. The hornwort sits, green and wrinkled, horns rising at odd angles. It does not know it is strange. It does not know it looks like a mistake. It just grows. That is what hornworts do.