Strange Flowers: Rubbish Flower
Rubbish Flower (Taraxacum chameleo)
This flower grows through fault lines in concrete, under skies discoloured by pollution, near fissures in the pipelines that carry industrial waste from abandoned steel mills to the ragged shoreline, where bands of diminished men scavenge dead fish and plastic vessels from the yellowish foam that persists along the water’s edge.
The Rubbish Flower is almost impossible to spot in the wild, even for the most well-trained botanist. The plant’s camouflage is exceptionally cunning: wherever it grows, it takes on the appearance of the garbage that surrounds it. A blossom might, at first glance, seem like nothing more than a precarious arrangement of used condoms and soiled sanitary napkins. Another blossom, growing only three meters away, could adopt the appearance of a discarded ashtray with such astonishing precision that even the slightest details — the tobacco stains, the delicate fault lines in the weakened glass, the chip where a beer bottle toppled — would be evident in the reproduction.
Any aspiring botanist fortunate enough to discover a Rubbish Flower in the wild might be treated to a rare sight. Once a season, when conditions are optimal, the flower releases its spores. And those delicate things, swollen and feathery like winter’s first snowflakes, are known to execute a most elaborate dance, following the turbulent patterns of the wind. A cloud of spores might rise toward the heavens, folding upon itself in complex geometrical arrangements, swelling with some unseen breath until, finally, the cloud comes undone, dissociating into an infinity of specs, lost forever to consideration.
Sitting there, amidst the waste of human consumption, the aspiring botanist might come to realize that the turbulent patterns of the wind have always been with him. And they have always been magnificent.
This is the true beauty of the Rubbish Flower — it helps one see.
This short story will appear in my upcoming surrealist botanical field guide, Strange Flowers, which should be available for purchase in the next month or so. A selection of prints from this series are already available in my online store.