Parachute plant: so weird, it's cool
Many plants are beautiful, some are plain, and others are plain weird. But weird can be oh so cool. I recently saw an example of that in my friend Marilynn’s garden. Check it out. When looking at the flower from the top, not so unusual: But from the side, it’s a different story: The flower is like a gazebo with a roof! The plant is a tangled mess of twining stems with fleshy leaves and those weird flowers: Marilynn still had the label from the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory where she bought it many years ago: Ceropegia sandersonii is a perennial succulent vine native to southeastern Africa. It belongs to the dogbane family (Apocynaceae), thus called because some taxa were used as dog poison. Other members of this large family include adeniums, milkweeds, oleanders, pachypodiums, periwinkles, plumerias, and stapeliads. The top petals of the funnel-shaped flowers form a roof, the bottom petals a tube, with windows in between. The flowers mimic the scent of a honeybee under attack (I’m...