![]() As if that wasn't enough, they also have a prehensile stinger filled with venom that can kill a person instantly. ![]() Their petals have a sticky trap for insects. The answer is: carnivorous flowers that can walk around on their roots. "What is a triffid?" you might be saying to yourself. Triffids, from The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham ![]() Once again an author has taken an innocuous, common flower and turned it into something dangerous. Once they blossom, they never wilt or die, and their soothing scent lures unwary victims into a trance-like state that can only be cured by physically removing them from the poppy field. They are magical and deadly, larger and more beautiful than any poppy in our world. While Baum did base his poppies on an actual flower–the opium poppy–and the flowers in the book resemble the common red poppy. One of the most memorable scenes in cinematic history is Dorothy, the Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Lion running through a field of poppies toward the Emerald City, only to be overtaken by sleep. WW Denslow, 1900 Deadly Poppies from The Wizard of Oz by Frank L Baum Popular magic flowers movie#The 1951 Disney movie version of this scene may or may not have terrified us as children. ![]() `I never saw anybody that looked stupider,’ a Violet said, so suddenly, that Alice quite jumped for it hadn’t spoken before." "`It’s my opinion that you never think at all,’ the Rose said in a rather severe tone. While flowers in our world are pretty, harmless, and silent, these flowers talk and are pretty rude. These flowers are true Wonderland, the exact opposite of what you would expect in the logical world. Illustration by Peter Newell The Flowers from Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll In Tennyson's The Lotus Eaters, the characters rest on beds of moly and amaranth. "he gods call it Moly, Dangerous for a mortal man to pluck from the soil, but not for the deathless gods," Hermes tells Odysseus. Many scholars think it's purely magical, while others think it was a medicinal herb that served as an antidote to psychotropic drugs (the kind that might make you think you'd turned into a pig, for example). No one knows what plant moly really is, though, or if it even existed in reality. It's described as having small white flowers, similar to a snowdrop. Moly is a flowering herb that Hermes gave to Odysseus to protect him while he was a prisoner on Circe's island. ![]() Photograph by Simon Garbutt Moly, from The Odyssey Tolkien derived the name from Old English which loosely translated, means "evermind," a kind of Middle Earth version of a forget-me-not, though the simbelmynë's appearance is closer to that of a daisy. Simbelmynë is a small white flower that most people would probably pass by without a thought, if they didn't know that it grows only on the graves of the Kings of Rohan. Among the flowers of Middle Earth, however, simbelmynë is probably the most symbolic. Tolkien's books are filled with fictional plants, the most famous being the Ents, giant talking trees. Simbelmynë, from The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien In honor of Spring, here are some of our favorite fictional flowers. Maybe that's why so many authors turn flowers into plants that are powerful, dangerous, and magical. Georgia O'Keeffe once said that no one takes the time to look at flowers. It's true that, while appreciated for their beauty, flowers aren't regarded as "serious" plants. ![]()
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