This is an aside, or a footnote to the post about Queenston Heights (and my ability to alienate strangers).  I’m including it because when I was writing that one up, I remembered seeing the Corpse Flower that day, too. Corpse Flowers bloom only rarely in greenhouses and gardens.  It is a strange paradigm for a flower, a massive (3m!), stinky lily that looks like a low-budget extraterrestrial from an early episode of Doctor Who.  It had already begun to sag when we saw it, and the enormous spadix (the thick, fleshy thing in the middle) was collapsing into the folds of the spathe (the leafy, petal-y thing that wraps around the thing in the middle).

The “Floral Showhouse” was full of people photographing the last blooming days of the Corpse Flower, but we got a good look at it.  I was happy to have seen the curiosity, which looked a bit alien and lonely among the more conventional flowers.