Stinky Flowers and Rotten Teeth

    Have you ever wondered how funny it would be if you looked up one fine day to see mouths bearing rotten teeth dangling above you? A bit too dark for an opening...? I swear it was funnier in my head. The following post has nothing to do with anything scary, so you may read on without fear! Now before you question my sanity, I shall begin my story. So, hold tight and I'll tell you how this thought sprung up in my mind. It all starts with one small, red flower.

    I was quite early to class today since I worked out a new schedule for myself in an attempt to bring some discipline into my life. For the first hour, I had to go to the computer lab. The lab wasn't open yet so I was waiting outside. So, naturally with all this extra time, I decided to look around a little. I saw the ground scattered with these small flowers and I picked one up. 

    It looked slightly magical, with fuzzy, red petals curling at the tips, a stamen curving to face down. This made me look up around to find its source. Looking up there it was, a tree standing tall and proud. Out of curiosity I used Google lens to find out what it's called. It had a couple of common names but what really caught my eye and made me giggle was, 'bastard poon tree' and 'skunk tree'. They sounded a lot more like insults than anything.

    Scientifically they're called Sterculia foetida, known as bastard poon tree, skunk tree, java olive tree and hazel sterculia. The flowers are known to smell fetid. I did not sniff it so I cannot say that they are quite so bad as that. But, Carl Linnaeus must have been extremely displeased with the odour because their scientific name is also reflective of this fact. Sterculia as in Sterquilinus, the Roman god of fertilizing the earth.

    Now you might ask, what has that to do with mouths? I was already amused with the information I had gathered so far, but what came next did so even further. I was looking at images of this tree, when I noticed big red pods that open up to show black seeds lining the edges. They looked an awful lot like mouths. Perhaps it's a stretch, but if you didn't see it in those pods until now, then with this you'll never be able to unsee it!

    Sadly, I couldn't see any fresh pods on the tree I witnessed in person. There were dried up ones and they didn't look much like a mouth since all the "teeth" had fallen out already. However, it did spark the imagination and I ended up wondering about all those stories with man-eating plants. But with the look of these seeds they are too rounded and blunt to cause any real damage... that is, if they were really mouths. Besides, they are so dark, if they were real teeth they'd probably be on a liquid diet. 

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