Saturday, October 23, 2010

the strangest flower


It's happening again.


See that gigantic bud hanging below the shelf? Yeah, that's a bud for the most amazing and gruesome flower ever. I realized that this this is on a quite regular blooming cycle when I looked up the blog post from the last time it happened - it is just days off from being exactly 2 years ago. And I remember last year a bud formed too, but for some reason never opened. If you remember, I did a little research the last time the flower formed and found out that this particular cactus is from Africa and that its blooms are meant to look like dead rotting animals, and that they also have a stench so that it'll attract flies which pollinate it. I'm over the initial shock of that (some things should just remain un-Googled!) and I'm just looking forward to the flower, which if you didn't know any of the details about it, is really really amazing looking - even when you do know the details it's gorgeous, but you're like "yeah, I can see how those little red lines are supposed to look like veins, and the hairs are supposed to look like, well, hairs." This is just about the best thing you could hope for in October right before Halloween! You may not be able to tell from the picture, but the bud is like a nearly translucent pod that looks so alien you expect to see something alive in there if the light passes through! I love this thing!

1 comment:

emilynye said...

yeah... still creeps me out, even 2 years later.