Voodoo Lilies and Dinosaur Salad

 Here's me, with my voodoo face on. There's a Dracunculus vulgaris, which is the awesome Latin name for a Voodoo lily which is the awesome common name for Dracunculus vulgaris. Full circle.

This...thing...emerged from the blackberry thicket alongside the railway tracks at Sue & Hugh's...seemingly out of nowhere, but in fact their friend Mary (who is verging on 100 years old) used to garden around there, and brought in fascinating species from all around the world. Every year, something new and sometimes atrocious springs to life from some inexplicable dormancy, and this year, this was it.

I was a couple days late for the photo-op: the spathe (white/purple bit) was a lurid purple in it's prime, and the spadix (black bit) was somewhat more, ah-hem, erect. The stem (right) still shows the leopard print appropriate to such an inflorescence.

I've also included a pic of a monster Gunnera manicata (below) that Jen & I cycled by in Stanley Park this past weekend. (I tried to force some Kiwi tourists to also have a portrait taken with it but they bizarrely deferred in favour of a blue hydrangea.) This is massive and impressive and made me feel like an elf, which made me happy.