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12 September 2006

Humor, a la Mother Nature. This freaky silly thing is growing by our sidewalk out back. It makes us laugh.
And the side view. The big stalks in the back are jumbo sunflowers.

≡ Click to see image ≡
posted by chewatadistance 12 September | 13:00
It looks like a pot-scrubber pad. :)
posted by BoringPostcards 12 September | 13:08
Wow. That is supercool! If you ever find out the name I hope you post it here. I would love to have that in a garden.
posted by LunaticFringe 12 September | 13:10
I think you should mow over it.
posted by sciurus 12 September | 13:14
That's an awesome plant, chewie. I have absolutely no idea what it is. Do you? I bet weretable would know.

A couple years ago, I had a weird fungus in the driveway. It's called Pisolithus tinctorius, or the dyemaker's puffball, but its common name is "dog turd fungus." Guess why:

≡ Click to see image ≡

Some people from the university identified it and wanted to collect it, but I told them no -- I really wanted to see what it was going to do over the course of its life.

Then the next-door neighbor kid, in a fit of generosity, put my trash cans out one night when I was away. He ran over the thing. I was so sad.

I miss my dog turd fungus.
posted by mudpuppie 12 September | 13:17
OK, sci: you are officially not allowed anywhere near my garden.
posted by LunaticFringe 12 September | 13:21
My sidewalk find isn't quite as gorgeous. It's a rose mallow of some sort, with lovely violet flowers. I found it two summers ago coming out of a crack in a concrete slab on our rental property, and tried and tried to propagate it in a safer location. I moved one sibling, I tried cuttings, I tried planting the seed balls.

Last year I was spraying weeds and managed to get too close and it died.

This year, though, two fresh plants grew a short distance away. One was actually in grass and liable to be mowed, so I felt I was losing nothing by putting it in a pot, and surprisingly this time it worked. It doesn't flower the first year, they say, but it looks reasonably healthy, after a couple of dicey weeks when it seemed to fall over limp every time it got a little sun.

The one that's still in the sidewalk, which isn't the orginal, has a very rough swamp-mallow appearance and the flowers aren't quite as lovely as that first one. It really is a plant only a wildflower lover could love.
posted by stilicho 12 September | 13:25
(ppst, chewie - that's a weed. A pretty weed, but still totally a weed. Of course, I've never been one to advocate the senseless destruction of pretty things.)
posted by muddgirl 12 September | 14:21
Not to quibble, but a weed is anything that grows where you don't want it to. This one seems welcome. :)

*is on a mission to stem egregious uses of the word "weed"*

*just learned that a "weed" is also a name for black mourning armbands or hat bands, finds this fascinating*
posted by mudpuppie 12 September | 14:28
No idea what it is - someone said it's a proteus which I guess is some kind of plant native to tropical climes. Here's a link.
posted by chewatadistance 12 September | 17:52
Sure they didn't mean Protea? It isn't one of those. I don't think it's a Protea, either.

It's not a weed unless it is growing somewhere it's not wanted, as mudpuppie pointed out.
posted by dg 12 September | 18:53
My grandfather called me Weed :) [Because my name is Heather, which is a weed to some people]
posted by Sil 12 September | 19:25
Looks like a rambutan. I know it's not, but it looks like one.
posted by dobbs 12 September | 20:10
The leaves look like a zinnia, although I have never seen one with a flower that looked like that. Although there are thousands of them, so who knows.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs 13 September | 02:03
IMDB Morbidity. || One of my favorite sequence puzzles:

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