Araceae

Elephant Yam

Amorphophallus paeniifolius

This flower uses the smell of rotten flesh to make it attractive to carrion feeding flies & beetles. Maybe one day in the distant horticultural future, flowers will smell like my favourite food – chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, or perhaps a freshly baked baguette from this French bakery I used to go to in Pau.

I would gladly rub the pollen over my body if it did.

Philodendron

The spathe (a hood that covers the flowers) of the Philodendron is a Sex Pad for beetles, it warms up, lets out a perfume & provides food as well as a place for the Beetles to spend the whole night lovemaking in. In some species there can be up to 200 beetles in the one Love Chamber.

Giraffe’s knees

Gonatopus boivinii

An Arum from Africa. Such a significant amount of giraffes die from lightening strikes that they lower their heads during lightening storms and may even compete with one another to become lower in height.

The plant, although it has a pulvinus (swollen region on the petiole that can rapidly lose pressure and bend down) has no fear of death from Lightening

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