Palme D’Awe

A coco de mer at the Eden Project


A rare and endangered palm at the Eden Project is thought to have made botanical history by producing the UK’s largest mature leaf of its kind, about 13ft (4m) long. The coco de mer, native to the Seychelles, was grown from a seed in the Cornwall attraction’s rainforest biome. The seed, given by the Seychelles Ministry of Agriculture in 2003, has now developed into a plant with a massive mature leaf. Over the next decade, the leaf could grow to 8-10m long, the Eden Project said. — Rare palm’s 13ft leaf thought to be UK’s largest, BBC News, 20ix25

Vulgar Tongue

Viper’s bugloss, Echium vulgare (L 1753)


Also known as: blue devil, blue thistle, blueweed, snake flower; Gewöhnlicher Natternkopf, Blaue Natternkopf; vipérine commune, vipérine vulgaire, serpentine; viperina azzurra; viborera, viperina; gwiberlys; żmijowiec zwyczajny; naderles; ლურჯი ძირწითელა; 蓝蓟; синяк обыкновенный; etc.

Floral Hex

I knew what the Sempervivum plant looked like:

Sempervivum × giuseppii (from Wikipedia)


But I’d never seen the flowers until a few days ago:

Sempervivum flowers (from Gardener’s Path)


They remind me of Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Demon of the Flower”:

Not as the plants and flowers of Earth, growing peacefully beneath a simple sun, were the blossoms of the planet Lophai. Coiling and uncoiling in double dawns; tossing tumultuously under vast suns of jade green and balas-ruby orange; swaying and weltering in rich twilights, in aurora-curtained nights, they resembled fields of rooted serpents that dance eternally to an other-worldly music. — “The Demon of the Flower”, Astounding Stories, Dec 1933