Safe Plants For Bearded Dragons

As bearded dragons come from desert areas it naturally follows that you will be thinking about using desert plants for your bearded dragon cage.

Unfortunately most cacti are likely to damage your bearded dragon with their spines whilst many succulent plants are in fact toxic.

If you can find some cacti much larger than your bearded dragon that have soft instead of sharp spines they may be used safely.

I personally am not an expert, so just go down to the garden center and look at what is available. I can't tell you what it is I have in my tank at the moment, but its been there for 6 months without any problems at all - and it's just a cactus that's "fluffy" rather than being "spiny".

Alternatively, whilst not as authentic, the following is a list of plants I have used successfully in reptile tanks in the past:

• Assorted Ferns - such as my favourite, Bird's Nest Fern

• Jews Ear or Inch Plant - a great plant that will grow fast in the tank (incidentally this is the easiest thing I've found to feed stick insects on in captivity when the weather is too bad for you to want to go out searching for plants)

• Banana Plants - as well as other fruit plants such as passion flower. Bananas offer great height in the tank and look very tropical but can grow fast!

• Spider Plants - hardy, and don't require much light to flourish