Real Monstrosities — The Pelican Flower is a Central American vine with...

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The Pelican Flower is a Central American vine with huge flowers that bloom for just two days before they wilt and die.

The first day is spent using the stench of death and decay to attract flies which get trapped overnight within the depths of the flower. They’re only let out the next day, after a dowsing of pollen, so they can get trapped by a whole new flower and pollinate it in the process.

Pelican Flowers get their name from looking a bit like a pelican from the side. I guess Malevolent Alien Chrysalis Flower didn’t catch on.

…Images: dl7tny/Cary Bass/Kew on Flickr/Brian Chiu/Brian Henderson

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Fairy Lanterns are some 50 species of weird, parasitic plants.

They spend almost all their lives as underground roots, emerging only to show off a tiny flower for pollination.

These plants parasitize other plants, but not directly.

A lot of fungi strike up relationships with plants, whereby the fungus extracts nutrients from the soil and gives them to the plant in exchange for nutrients the plant manufactures by photosynthesis.

Fairy Lanterns want the photosynthesis stuff but they don’t take it from the plant, they take it from the fungus who got it from the plant.

Crafty!

…Images: Tindo2/rmounce

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The Skeleton Flower (Diphylleia grayi) is a Halloween horror!

And why ever not?

Why shouldn’t a flower have a skeleton? And muscles? And claws? And tentacles? And teeth? And some kind of internal acid bath? And the intellect of a thousand mastermind strategists?

What’s wrong with a plant trying to pull themselves up the food chain?

Skeleton Flowers are currently found only in mountain forests in eastern China, Japan and western North America.

But if their ascent continues I’m sure they’ll spread far and wide, to all the high places and low places, thinking… planning… watching…

Soon, it’ll be a plant eat person world out there.

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It’s a heart! A whole clothes line of bloody, broken hearts! Just in time for Valentine’s.

These are the delightful flowers of the Bleeding Heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis).

The actual plant can reach up to 4 feet tall and comes from Siberia, northern China, Japan and Korea. Also gardens all over the world.

Aside from stems covered in leaves, Bleeding Hearts also throw out several stems that each have up to 20 bleeding hearts dangling from them.

It would be utterly disgusting were it not so pretty!

…Images: Lotte Grønkjær/Dendroica cerulea/Henry Figueroa/Nicholas Turland/Steven Severinghaus

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The Lamb’s Ear (Stachys byzantina) is one of the fluffiest, wuffiest plants in the world!

It comes from Turkey, Armenia and Iran and spends most of the year looking like a dense mat of leaves that only reaches about 20 cm tall.

Each leaf is shaped like a lamb’s ear and is covered in soft, silvery hairs that are a delight to touch and stroke. It’s pretty much a pet plant that you can cuddle.

Then, in spring and summer, they grow an extremely woolly spike, with extremely woolly leaves, and extremely woolly flower buds.

It’s a true feast for the hands!

I guess the flowers are a feast for butterflies and bees and stuff, but they’re not woolly at all. So… whatever.

…Images:  Jean-Pol GRANDMONT/Tor Lillqvist/Stan Shebs/Carl Lewis/ Geoffrey Gilmour-Taylor

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