I love gardening. I have an extensive herb garden, and lots of flowers, mostly in the front of my house. I guess you’d say I have a green thumb. This year, I concentrated mostly on flowers that I planted with an eye toward the various color combinations and the seasons they bloom, so that I always had something blooming; but as every gardener will tell you, sometimes things grow you didn’t plant, and sometimes things happen to those plants that you didn’t expect.
This year, one of my black-eyed susan daisies grew a quadruple center.
At left are a couple photos of this phenomenon. It was as if four flowers grew on one stem, and bloomed, and four cone-shaped centers grew together with their petals all squashed into the spaces between. It was pretty strange and sort of ugly. And, it got me thinking about ugly flowers, so naturally, I had to do a web-surf to see if there was a website devoted to the ugliest of the worlds flowers. And of course there is. (There’s a lot of them, in fact.)
This year, one of my black-eyed susan daisies grew a quadruple center.
At left are a couple photos of this phenomenon. It was as if four flowers grew on one stem, and bloomed, and four cone-shaped centers grew together with their petals all squashed into the spaces between. It was pretty strange and sort of ugly. And, it got me thinking about ugly flowers, so naturally, I had to do a web-surf to see if there was a website devoted to the ugliest of the worlds flowers. And of course there is. (There’s a lot of them, in fact.) In my web travels I found what has got to be the world’s ugliest blossom.
It’s called aristolochia gigantea. The genus aristolochia has some of the most bizarre flowers ever grown on this planet, and none of them are very pretty. They all look like some mutant afterbirth, or some horrid alien being.
Pretty hideous eh? Not only are they ugly, they smell foul. Like carrion. Makes my little four-centered daisy look positively enchanting.
Take a look at this variety (right):
This one is called aristolochia fimbriata.
The gigantea, though, has to be the worst of the worst. I found several pictures of it.
Here is another one, if you even start to think that it isn’t too bad:
It’s called aristolochia gigantea. The genus aristolochia has some of the most bizarre flowers ever grown on this planet, and none of them are very pretty. They all look like some mutant afterbirth, or some horrid alien being.
Pretty hideous eh? Not only are they ugly, they smell foul. Like carrion. Makes my little four-centered daisy look positively enchanting.
Take a look at this variety (right):
This one is called aristolochia fimbriata.
The gigantea, though, has to be the worst of the worst. I found several pictures of it.
Here is another one, if you even start to think that it isn’t too bad:
This is what the poor thing looks like just before the blossom opens. This “bud” looks like some kind of strange internal organ. And these things are huge! They’re about a foot across.
So--hideously ugly, stinky and too big to hide. What more could a Mutant Gardener want? Well, how about a flower that looks like it’s dripping snot? Yeah. I’d want one of these. This one is called aristolochia grandiflora, though I fail to see what is so grand about it.
This genus has the most hideous blooms I’ve ever seen. It’s amazing what you can find in this world.
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