#giant plants

[futurebird]

Attack of the Giant Tulip

The first leaves to part the soil were thick as the hide of a rhino, the stem, several inches in diameter puckered with growth, expanding to the width of a tree trunk. The ladies of the garden club assumed it was a mutation. It would die before blooming! But, the vascular power of the plant (now as wide as a house) drained the duck pond. Roots engulfed the church basement, swelled to plug sewage pipes.

At the tip of the central stem a great bud had begun to form.

The first calls to "cut it down!" began. For a flower it was unseemly. Not elegant, not delicate, a beastly vegetable with none of the charms of dainty pansies or cherry blossoms.

It was an abomination!

But, its peculiar nature also served to protect the strange plant from the ax and the chain saw.

The ladies of the garden club knew *objectively* none of the flower shows could denny them a trophy now. (How they imagined to pot and transplant the plant to be shown, I do not know.)

In the balmy days of July the growth continued. Now the great tulip seemed less intent on swallowing the town whole and focused on refining and strengthening its existing form. The leaves darkened and acquired a pattern of fine glossy scales with sharp edges. The stem was ringed and decorated with blade-like ridges of such a vibrant, bright, neon-green that they seemed to glow for several hours after sunset, tattooing the plant with a tracery of graceful swirling geometric curves.

Thorns formed at the base of the leaves, and around the collar of the bud.

The bud darkened, and seemed to shrink, as if tightening itself like a spring, as if winding up to deliver a punch.

What would happen when the bloom was unleashed?

Perhaps is was this fear and question that lead Thurston, who lived two houses down to try his hand at taking a chainsaw to the plant.

Later some would say that he wanted to steal the flower, to sell it, but personally I think he was just frightened.

A chainsaw isn't the right tool for cutting wet vegetable matter. The application of gnashing violence to the the stem resulted in masses of sticky green pulp, the wet plant matter piled up around Thurston's knees, it clung to his face and arms. No matter how hard he pressed the chainsaw into the stem he failed to make significant progress, and only released more of the sticky green material.

And laced as it was with those bladed ridges he soon found himself covered in fine cuts.

According to the coroner, who had to be called in from Trenton, the cause of death was anaphylactic shock. Thurston had an undiagnosed allergy to the pulp of tulip stems.

But, I don't think anyone really believed that was all there was to it.

The man had tried to kill the plant and the plant had fought back and gotten the better of him. The plant had taken revenge.

In only a few days you could hardly tell that an attempt to cut that great stem had been made at all. [to be continued]

[secretlyascorpio]

[artoflumeria]

Telleris' lighthouse 🌊

[stardustedtea]

Pitcher Plant 🌱✨

•

project for my visual communications class :>

[dieletztepanzerhexe]

i finally got my cousin today to take my beautiful giant yucca to his flat. i have “obtained” this magnificent 2,5 m tall yucca in 2021 from the street (technically it wasn’t stealing - a year prior i met the yucca’s owner and she told me i can have it if i want, because she had to move and her new place was too small).

this summer i brought her outside my building so she could get more sun but then in autumn i didn’t have enough energy to bring her back to my apartment, because she’s reaaaaaaaaally heavy so it’s not an easy task. honestly i have no idea how did i manage to move her at all. so before the temperature dropped below 0 i brought her to the basement, where she has spent the last month. in the darkness...

here she is on the snow!

i’m very happy that i found her a new home. i love her, she really makes any space look like a jungle, she’s one of the most glorious plants i’ve seen (she’s a bit distressed after all the things that happened to her and doesn’t look her best in the photo, but she will heal quickly) but i just can’t own too many plants (and too big for that matter). i didn’t want to just give her away to any random person from f4(3b00k or something. I want to still be able to see her from time to time!

[tenth-sentence]

From speaking of these colossal plants, Ned, Conseil, and I naturally deviated to the gigantic animals of the sea.

"20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" - Jules Verne

[vampirostrega]

[smol-jo]

[heartnosekid]

giant african land snails (archachatina marginata) | msk.snails on ig

[yubriamakesart]

Mr Qi gives me the vibe of an eldritch being that is not bound by the laws of our reality, but chooses to abide by them anyways. And if you've read my comic, you can probably guess I can't resist that kind of thing.

animated version (flash/eyestrain warning)

[oliviarampaige]

“Soothsayer”

Day 22 - Botanical Beasts

Can you escape the entropy?

[margocooper]

Львиный зев большой, львиный зев крупный (лат. Antirrhinum majus). Октябрь 24. Snapdragon Giant . October 24.

[gummi-stims]

☘️

[cutiesigh]

「Demo WIP」 Can y'all watch my plant real quick? 🍈

[fernsproutxx]

GR96

@fusionspruntcityjournal

So how do you produce electricity with living plants? Simply by using the natural processes that already occur. In short: the plant produces organic matter via photosynthesis. Only part of this organic matter is then used for its own growth. The rest is excreted via the roots. Around the roots, bacteria feed on the organic matter and they release electrons. If you’re able to harvest the electrons into an electrode, you can couple the first electrode to a counter-electrode and build an electrical circuit, like in a battery. The electrons flow back into the natural system via the counter-electrode, so it’s completely circular. Because we use the natural processes around the plant, nature is not harmed. It works day and night, summer and winter. It only stops when the plant and its surroundings completely dry up or freeze over.

Sedum Oviferum

Sedum pachyphyllum is a ground-hugging succulent that spreads by rooting fallen stems and leaves. The succulent also goes by the names “Cerise Moonstones” or “Mauve Pebbles”. The short and stumpy round leaves have a light silvery-purple color; positioned at a right angles to the stem and curve upward, which in the wintertime, the tips of said leaves will turn into a notorious red.

Sedum Oviferum is a succulent that is very easy to grow and maintain. It is a resilient plant that can tolerate drought, moist and dry soils, and when given adequate exposure to sunlight and sufficient water, Cerise Moonstones will thrive outdoors. The Sedum Oviferum succulent grows at its best with regular exposure to sunlight. If Mauve Pebbles are planted in an area in a garden that gets plenty of sunlight per day, you will be rewarded with bright coloured leaves and flowers. In winter and early spring, Cerise Moonstones actively grow and produce blooms featuring red-orange petals and sepals that have the same pigmentation as the leaves. The flowers produced by Cerise Moonstones have a bell shape and a sugary fragrance.

Subterranean Clover

Trifolium subterraneum is also known as the subterranean clover (often shortened to sub clover), or subterranean trefoil. The plant's name comes from its underground seed development, a characteristic not possessed by other clovers. It can thrive in poor-quality soil where other clovers cannot survive.

This species is self-fertilizing, unlike most legume forage crops such as alfalfa and other clovers, which are pollinated by insects, especially honeybees. It is also grown in places where the extreme ranges of soil type and quality, rainfall, and temperature make the variable tolerances of sub clover especially useful.

Functionality

GR96 are powered by any plant of choosing on their back pod (the one we are going to discuss has a giant Sedum Oviferum and multiple sub clovers to operate) which is held in place by five strong suction cups. They’re manufactured for community gardens (strictly only one per garden), but they can also be bought by high class citizens for private properties, though at a way bigger cost since they’re financed by the city.

They can use their hands as scissors, shovels, and for watering (hence the big forearms, for storing the water), the latter which they do by dipping their hands in a bucket, opening the valve on their forearms so they can fill them up and releasing the water from the pinholes on their palms. Their “eyes” are actually a screen that can show plenty expressions, but the two circles above that peripheral screen are the real environmental sensors. They also have the same sensors on their ankles for inspecting the lower plants and ground without the need of kneeling, and their feet are shaped in a way so that weight is evenly distributed, lowering the chances of damaging a plant if they were to step on it. The ear like protrusions are small solar panels, used as backup energy (they don’t have any communication properties). Their speaker aka their “voice” is the mohawk-like structure on the top (which also has their series barcode 128 on the lower back), but when they speak there are these strips at the sides of the face mask that light up with the volume. The mask (non removable) has a set of pipes that are used for analyzing the air quality and humidity of the area surrounding them.

[rattyexplores]

Giant Scale Insect

I got a bit of a shock when I saw this thing.

At first I thought it might've been the larva of those big leaf beetles I found. Was very surprised to discover it was a scale insect.

Unidentified, genus Monophlebulus

28/03/23