- Author: Georgia Luiz
Yay Halloween! We revel in all that is spooky, dress up in unusual ways, and pig out on loads of yummy, cavity-causing candy. What's not to love, and why stop there? Let's take it to the garden. Here are some of my favorite plants in all there festive, creepy, otherworldly beauty.
Let's start with Tacca chantrieri, the black bat flower. Dark bracts resembling bat wings surround small maroon flowers while long whiskery filaments hang down resembling a bat in flight.
Or perhaps if you like something more visceral, Spilanthes oleracea, the eyeball plant, will seem to follow you where ever you go with its round cream and russet inflorescence. Incidentally, it's also called the toothache plant, for those of us who over do it in the candy corn department. It's leaves have a numbing affect when chewed.
Lack of chlorophyll lends the Monotropa uniflora, 'Ghost Plant' the look of bony apparitions rising from the dark ground deep in forests where the sun never shines. Parasitic on Mycorrhizal fungi, they derive their nutrients from photosynthetic trees, which pass their energy on to the fungi, and finally on to our little ghouls.
Gorgeous and monstrous come together in the Dracula orchids, whose scents range from something sweet to something the cat dragged in. Talk about your tricks or treats! They can be brightly festive, or subtle and broody. Unlike some other orchids, the lip in the Dracula is mobile. So does that mean it bites?
Terrible beauty is all well and good, but how about something a little more common? Go get a black plastic cauldron from the Halloween isle at your local store, punch a hole in the bottom, and plant some orange pansies with black spidery looking Mondo grass. Decorate with Spanish moss. See? some of the scariest ones have been hiding in plain sight right there among us all along.
Well, Sleep tight!
- Author: Georgia Luiz
In my small collection of hot house treasures resides a shelf of carnivorous beauties. Some generally treat them as novel annuals, but with research I have learned the seasonal rhythms of my little collection. I see that with high day and low night temperatures the Nepenthe have put out their tubby red lipped pitchers, waiting for any nosy bug to come on by and drop in, forever. The various Drosera 'sundews' reach their spatula or tentacled red leaves up towards the summer sun where their tiny hairs glisten with sweet dew drops in the morning and wrap around nomadic gnats in the evening. Standing tall and spotted, Sarrecenia, pitcher plants open their long throats, offering up a trumpet full of digestive juices that smells like honey. In their midst, strange red flowers sprout up, facing downward with the parachuted centers. And, of course, the ubiquitous Dionaea muscipula 'Venus flytrap sits in it's boggy pot with its pointy rows of teeth in a wide open smile waiting to snap shut and lock away a little winged something for noshing on later. The tiny bladderworts masquerading as fiber optic flowers stand as tall as their thready stems will allow.
This has been my spring, summer, and fall show. I know in the winter months the pitchers will dry up as their leaves go dormant, and the fly traps will wither and die down to the ground where they will snooze until the days get longer again. After all, everything in nature needs it's beauty sleep.