If ghoulies, ghosties and bonfires aren’t really your thing, never fear dearies, we’re here to help you.
We’ve found plenty of botanical nightmares out there worthy of The Little Shop of Horrors…
The carnivorous plants hold a special fascination, don’t they – monkey cups (Nepenthes), cobra plants (Darlingtonia), Venus fly-traps (Dionaea) and the like. These lure innocent insects to their doom with their gaudy shapes and colours and scents. Horrified but intrigued, we watch as the fly buzzes nonchalantly towards mortal danger, like a young woman in a skimpy nightie walking through a house at midnight without turning the light on (doesn’t she KNOW that the film is called ‘Axe Murderer III’?)
Black plants exude that other-worldly quality needed for All Hallows’ Eve. Aeonium ‘Swartkop’, lilyturf (Ophiopogon) and black bat lilies (Tacca chanteiri) would make a bouquet fit for Frankenstein’s Bride. Airplants (Tillandsia) would provide perfect white cobwebby decorations for the Wedding Breakfast, as the guests sipped their Deadly Nightshade cocktails and danced to the theme from The Addams Family or perhaps Ghostbusters.
Cobra plants are very gothic…very Caroline. In fact the pitcher-plant renders its victims so roaring drunk (albeit on nectar, not prosecco) they fall down a deep dark hole which has a strong resonance with her weekends.
My favourite spooky plant is the mandrake (Madragora officinarum) which has a load of ancient mythology attached to it. Folk believed that the plant emitted such a terrifying scream when you pulled it out if the ground, that you died of shock. In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets the redoubtable Hermione explained the reason that Prof Sprout insisted on everyone wearing earmuffs when they were repotting young mandrakes. Now, there’s a plant with a bad attitude!
OMG could she be more dramatic? At least she stopped short of telling us that maidenhair ferns would be ideal in the steamy environment found behind the shower curtain in a remote motel……. But actually all her examples are just sensible adaptations that plants have evolved to help them cope with their environment.
So-called carnivorous plants still photosynthesise like any other plant but just need a bit of extra nitrate due to the nutrient-poor soils they live in, so the odd insect makes an ideal protein supplement.
The ethereal aura of airplants is down to the their exterior layer of specialised non-living cells called trichomes which are able to absorb water from the atmosphere, and there is clearly a huge advantage to any plant to have leaves that are poisonous to eat! All just basic botany really (well she did choose an arts degree over a much more useful science training, comme moi).
I am more intrigued by plants that have developed deception as a way of procreation and you probably harbour some of these in your own back
They can even raise their temperature several degrees to mimic the natural warmth of decomposing flesh. But instead, the flies find themselves trapped inside the bulbous base, unable to leave until they’ve performed an act of pollination. If only there was a horticultural #metoo hashtag, those poor flies would be all over it….
But back to Halloween and can I just give a shout out for the amazing value of a single packet of Thompson and Morgan’s ornamental gourds ‘Autumn Glory’. From this one packet and very little aftercare we have just harvested the entire table-full of sweet little pumpkins featured in our photo at the top of this week’s blog.
Blimey my own ‘dark secrets’ look rather tame in comparison. Though 50 years ago I do recall Laura and I tying a charm bracelet to a length of nylon thread and running it from our bedroom, up to Elaine’s. After ‘lights out’ we gave the thread a tug and as the bracelet clanked up the outside of Elaine’s bedroom window, her ear-piercing screams quite drowned out our own delighted squeals (which soon turned to wails when we were soundly ticked off by mum).
But if you are wanting to go a step further and actually poison your annoying sibling, you could try Brugmansia which has such a hallucinogenic effect that after drinking tea made with just two of its flowers a young man once cut off his own arm with pruning shears apparently. It’s rather tender although Laura does grow it in her glasshouse (yes it does make you wonder….).
Or you could try passing off the root of the now-flowering Autumn crocus as a garlic bulb. They’re hard to tell apart but the former can kill you in very short order.
If this is a little too much Halloween for you, may I suggest you plant some garlic? Now is the perfect time of year to do so and of course, it’s an excellent deterrent for witches.
Remember there are three of us, we have some expertise in these things, mwahahahahah!
There is a striking plant for this time of year that Louise struggled to grow until she put it in a pot – now it’s looking fantastic and so perfect for the Halloween theme that it’s her Great Plant this Month:
Baby it’s getting cold outside!
Laura offers four tips for keeping your pot plants safe from the cold and wet this winter this short video;
Wallflowers, pot-grown Christmas trees, holly standards…there are quite a few things we’ve tracked down at ‘money off’ prices this week. Worth a squizz?
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