Monday, November 1, 2010

not so itsy bitsy spider

i have to show you these crazy flowers my parents have at the bottom of their driveway - they're called spider flowers, or cleome. they grow like crazy, really tall and strong, and what i love about them is how much they have going on. the bloom itself is bright and spiky and then there are these long tendrils coming off of them.

at the end of each tendril are these long pods that i can't help expect little creatures to come out of. each part is just so perfectly formed and even in person, they look more like a beautiful photograph than they do an actual living plant.

and then the stem itself, the one that holds up each flower, is adorned with hundreds of perfectly aligned leaves. they look like a beautiful origami sculpture. amazing.

note: thanks to reader amy for clarifying that these flowers are not in fact bee balm.

2 comments:

  1. just wanted to let you know this flower isn't bee balm .. it's cleome (or spider flower). they're one of my absolutel favorites. they grow tall and crazy and look a lot like fireworks explosions when they're in bloom. if your parents are lucky (or not, depending on how they feel about it...), the plants will re-seed themselves and spread for next season! http://home.howstuffworks.com/define-cleome-spider-flower.htm

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  2. thank you so much for the clarification, i have revised the post! and thanks for reading :)

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