Living in Costa Rica can be like waking up on the set of Avatar or walking out the door into Wonderland. Seriously. Just look at what I stumbled upon the other day while hanging out in Puerto Viejo.
What is this? Is it some type of fungus? Cabbage? Cabbage fungus? I’m so confused.
It’s about 1 foot in diameter and 2 feet tall. It doesn’t stink. The surface is tough, not soft. That’s all I got. If you know, or have a guess, please leave a comment and help me figure this out!
What is it?! You can see the stringy internal structure inside the hole up towards the top, just to the right of the center. Besides those skeletal stringy things, it is hollow inside.
Check out the wrinkly top view!
We called it “Kidaram” flower in Sri Lanka. It’s a rare kind of flower and stink.
ooo cool. I looked it up and the interwebs says it smells like rotting flesh (!!), but I definitely didn’t smell anything stinky coming from the one I found. I was really close to it, too. Maybe it expelled all its stink? Or maybe it’s a different type that doesn’t smell?
Maybe if you touch it, the horrible smell comes out? 🙂 It’s a beautiful flower though. Looks really exotic.
Julia
ewww that’s definitely a mental image from a movie – huge plumes of rotten flesh smoke wafting from the beautiful yet deadly flower after being touched lol
that thing reminds me of a classic sci-fi from the 80s, the invasion of the body snatchers (this was a remake from one in the 50s if I recall correctly)
bottom line, if it belongs to the vegetable kingdom it will grow here somehow, I’ve been trying to get rid of a few plants in my backyard and the only thing I havent done so far is to use a blowtorch , the @#$@# things keep coming back
I suppose I could try to plant one of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrion_flower 🙂
You know, I think that it’s the same species as that link you posted.
I can’t believe it’s a flower, it just looks so weird! My dad and all his science nerd friends 😉 are coming to Costa Rica next month, so I’ll make sure to ask them about it.
we got a bunch of it and i don’t know whats its name