This one I picked up from my local big green box. Came from Collectors Corner in Victoria (where it seems a lot of my plants tend to come from as they don't get hit with that nasty $56 inspection fee...)
Anyway here's the overview of the flower. This was the second day of it being open, and as you can see the flies had a lovely time yesterday and managed to lay loads of eggs.
A couple of the eggs have hatched and there are a few tiny little maggots wandering around looking for the source of the somewhat strong scent of... well my friends yesterday described it as "dog turd". I'll accept that as being a fairly close approximation.
One of the things I love about this flower is the colouring. The main part of the flower is yellow, with bands of deep red. Then as you get to the tip of flower it loses the yellow and you get left with these lovely dark tips. Also its REALLY hairy lol. These plants like to act like carrion - i.e. it tries to mimic rotting meat to attract the flies. So the colouring etc all works to do that. The hair apparently mimics mould growing on rotting meat (at least to a flies eye lenses). Lovely. Best not to think to hard on this I think.
The plant is actually growing in the aqua coloured pot to the right. Eventually these pots will be too small. But I picked them up on special and they came in 4 nice bright colours which makes them easy to identify as my main plant.
Quite a lovely corona on this one even with all the fly eggs around it.
By the second day the ants had moved in and removed most of the eggs. At least they should get a good feed.
This is one that should not be grown near areas of human congregate for drinking and social purposes..... best kept down the back of the yard (maybe to annoy the neighbours)
An as you can see this one has another pod that is about to open (possibly today). They get what I liked to call "bruise lines" around the petal openings a day or two before. The open flower is the one above - its been open about 5 days now.
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