10 Creepy Plants That Shouldn't Exist

April 29, 2011 9:55 PM

10 Creepy Plants That Shouldn't Exist
posted by shivohum (45 comments total)

Fully half that list was fungus, or fungal infections of plants. Come on Cracked, I thought you knew better!
posted by explosion at 10:02 PM on April 29, 2011 [5 favorites]

It's that time of week for Cracked.com!
posted by WalterMitty at 10:04 PM on April 29, 2011

Buddha's Hand, seriously? Buddha's Hands are great, and they smell absolutely amazing.
posted by kenko at 10:09 PM on April 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

FUCK YOU CRACKED.COM! HAVE YOU EVER PUBLISHED A FUCKING ARTICLE ON A SINGLE PAGE? I FUCKING HATE YOU!
posted by dersins at 10:16 PM on April 29, 2011 [24 favorites]

This is gonna get hated on because it's from Cracked, but some of those plants are seriously messed up. I mean, one sweats blood and another is a bunch of eyeballs. OK, so some are fungi. Does "fungus that sweats blood" sound any better?

It's all for yuks. And I yukked.
posted by ORthey at 10:17 PM on April 29, 2011 [4 favorites]

Another idiot Cracked list, populated mostly by near-animals (fungi). They should have included coral and sea anenomes, just to complete it.

And #2, the Chinese fleeceflower, are sculpted roots (done early in the growing season, so the cuts will heal subtly and look more natural).
posted by IAmBroom at 10:19 PM on April 29, 2011 [11 favorites]

And #2, the Chinese fleeceflower, are sculpted roots (done early in the growing season, so the cuts will heal subtly and look more natural).

Thanks, you saved me a trip to google. But don't tell me you weren't incredulous the first time you saw one.
posted by psycho-alchemy at 10:24 PM on April 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

Resistant to magic, requires saving throw against OW MY EYES to hit, impervious to mithril do-something goggles.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:24 PM on April 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

spammy spam is spammy.
posted by b1tr0t at 10:27 PM on April 29, 2011

An amazing post would be a list of ten links to wikipedia articles on fucked up looking plants/fungi.

It would be just like a Cracked post in slightly fewer pages and with much more information.
posted by munchingzombie at 10:33 PM on April 29, 2011 [5 favorites]

How about a top 10 list of Cracked lists? Or even a top 10 list of top 10 lists of Cracked lists? Or a top 10 list of top 10 lists of top 10 lists? I could go on all day.
posted by WalterMitty at 10:40 PM on April 29, 2011

How much longer do we have to wait before Cracked goes completely meta?

10 Most Incredible Images Ever Posted on Cracked
10 Awesome Cracked Articles You May Have Missed
8 Misleading Cracked Article Titles
6 Most Obscure Facts Cracked Ever Referenced
5 Crazy Cracked Articles That Made No Sense
5 Embarassing Cracked Fact Check Failures
12 Greatest Cracked Articles Ever
36 Repetitive Cracked Articles That Didn't Need To Exist
posted by TwelveTwo at 10:43 PM on April 29, 2011 [12 favorites]

If only Alfred E. Neuman hadn't gotten himself a television show, then we could be seeing his articles on Metafilter first, and a day later the mods would have to delete Sylvester P. Smythe's poor facsimiles. Instead, we end up with the lousy duplicates and nothing original in sight. Are we in the right future? Are there parallel worlds cursed with a history where Cracked Magazine had the TV show?
posted by TwelveTwo at 10:54 PM on April 29, 2011 [3 favorites]

Based on the comments above, I hereby decide not to type my jaw-droppingly interesting comment about Devil's Claw.

Carry on.
posted by mudpuppie at 11:10 PM on April 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

But don't tell me you weren't incredulous the first time you saw one.

psycho-alchemy, I still am incredulous.
posted by IAmBroom at 11:27 PM on April 29, 2011

I read Cracked every day. Its how I learn about history & nature and stuff. Seanbaby and David Wong write for it now. The movie articles kinda suck though.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 11:34 PM on April 29, 2011

Fungi are mammals? Wow, my Darwin-tree-of-life poster thing is really wrong.
posted by Solomon at 11:38 PM on April 29, 2011

I think all plants and fungi are beautiful
posted by KokuRyu at 11:44 PM on April 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

It wasn't David Attenborough, but I still enjoyed the two and a half minutes it took to read that. Even if some of them are fungi.

Also, I'm going plant shopping tomorrow and if I see one of those baby eyeball things it's mine.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 11:47 PM on April 29, 2011

Dammit, shivohum, if this post sends me on another 100-hour Oblivion playthrough I'm gonna be sending you my student loan bills.
posted by nasreddin at 11:54 PM on April 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

I have he chinese bat plants at home and they're gorgeous.. I never thought they were creepy at all. I was more amazed that a flower could look like that.
posted by estuardo at 12:18 AM on April 30, 2011 [2 favorites]

...but we also have fruit bats here, which I also love, so that might explain it.
posted by estuardo at 12:19 AM on April 30, 2011

It was pretty clear that the Chinese fleeceflower had to be artificially assisted in some way. Otherwise my thirty-eight years of atheism would have been at an end. Probably. :-)
posted by Decani at 12:20 AM on April 30, 2011

..and we get the stinkhorn mushrooms here. I am so very lucky.
posted by estuardo at 12:22 AM on April 30, 2011

I'll take any of the above in place of the dandelions and cheeseweed I'll be eliminating from the yard this weekend.
posted by Graygorey at 1:23 AM on April 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

I've mentioned this before, but my magazine-writing friend revealed to me that, for these list articles, the editor tells the writer in advance how many items are required.
posted by StickyCarpet at 2:04 AM on April 30, 2011 [2 favorites]

1 site that doesn't know the difference between fungi and plants:

1) Cracked.com.
posted by delmoi at 2:08 AM on April 30, 2011

1 site that doesn't know the difference between fungi and plants:

1) Cracked.com.
posted by delmoi

Like Mad Magazine, Cracked apparently stopped paying attention in 1969.
posted by ShutterBun at 3:42 AM on April 30, 2011 [2 favorites]

This poor thread never had a chance.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 5:07 AM on April 30, 2011

And #2, the Chinese fleeceflower, are sculpted roots (done early in the growing season, so the cuts will heal subtly and look more natural).

Man, if they're gonna be that intellectually-dishonest, I kinda wish they'd gone all-out.

The "Horse Tree", or "Devil's Equine"

This plant, common to the American Southwest, is known for looking like an actual horse growing out of a tree. Don't believe it's real? Try googling it. Wikipedia also lists it as "inedible" and "uncommon". Wow, now that's an unholy image that seems right out of a David Cronenberg movie. What kind of person would actually grow that in their yard? Here's a stock photo of a horse we found.

(photo)
Caption: "Am I a cool horse? I say, NEIGH!"

Continue to Page 2
posted by Greg Nog at 5:12 AM on April 30, 2011 [5 favorites]

Thanks, shivohum. Enjoyed the article for the inspiring pix (and went looking for larger versions of several, and found them.) Anything else terribly important? No.

> Also, I'm going plant shopping tomorrow and if I see one of those baby eyeball things it's mine.
> posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 2:47 AM on April 30

Don't look, one's watching you now from the tub drain.
posted by jfuller at 5:45 AM on April 30, 2011

People complain about Cracked's 2-page thing, but if this were nearly any other site the content would be spread over 10 pages.

Also, Cracked is pseudo-educational, but seems to fall for urban legends a lot (and doesn't know plants from fungi).
posted by dirigibleman at 5:51 AM on April 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

I have a creepy plant! My husband planted a couple pawpaw in our backyard, which I supported as they are tasty and difficult to transport, since they start to ferment pretty much the instant they're ripe.

He forgot to mention (until after the trees were well-established) the part where it stinks like a rotting corpse for a week or two in April in order to draw various carrion flies to pollinate it. The neighbors are going to LOVE that. In fact, poor fruiting can be treated by hanging rotting chicken necks from the branches to attract more flies. Because my neighbors don't think I'm weird enough, and rotting corpse smell + hanging chicken necks from trees is not at all the kind of thing people might call the cops about.

They don't typically start fruiting until they're five years old or so, so I'm kind-of counting down.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:15 AM on April 30, 2011 [6 favorites]

Yeah, if that had been on the Huffington Post we'd all still be clicking through the slideshow. (If we hadn't given up.)

Minus points for not making a distinction between plants and fungus and not telling the whole story on that Chinese Fleeceflower. Plus points for the tooth sweating blood and the eyeballs. Gold stars for plants and fungii that look like dicks.
posted by Mcable at 6:17 AM on April 30, 2011

Dammit, shivohum, if this post sends me on another 100-hour Oblivion playthrough I'm gonna be sending you my student loan bills.

I don't get it -- is Oblivion known for disgusting plants in it or what? :)

And #2, the Chinese fleeceflower, are sculpted roots (done early in the growing season, so the cuts will heal subtly and look more natural).

Any links on this? I was looking for articles but couldn't find any.
posted by shivohum at 7:09 AM on April 30, 2011

Yeesh. As the Chinese batflower scrolled into view my panicked reaction was "Slake Moth! Look away!"
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:11 AM on April 30, 2011 [4 favorites]

I was kinda surprised they picked a bunch of (albeit creepy) fungi without even a mention of the titan arum.
posted by hegemone at 7:14 AM on April 30, 2011

You are going to need a nifty abbreviation to let people know it's just a Cracked article.

Cracked, the Wikipedia for snarky slackers...
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 8:04 AM on April 30, 2011

You are going to need a nifty abbreviation to let people know it's just a Cracked article.

SLL (Single-Link Listicle).
posted by kenko at 9:15 AM on April 30, 2011

Because what if the woods weren't scary enough?
posted by applemeat at 9:18 AM on April 30, 2011

Number 4, the Cedar-Apple Rust, was actually the subject of a contentious 1928 Supreme Court case about property rights. The state of Virginia ordered the destruction of a grove of ornamental red cedar trees on the grounds that they were spreading fungus to a nearby apple orchard, destroying a cash crop. The cedar tree owners challenged the underlying law on due process grounds, claiming that the state had no right to preference the apple owners' property interests over theirs. The Supreme Court upheld the law and engaged in an interesting philosophical musing about the distinction between action and inaction:

It would have been none the less a choice if, instead of enacting the present statute, the state, by doing nothing, had permitted serious injury to the apple orchards within its borders to go on unchecked. When forced to such a choice the state does not exceed its constitutional powers by deciding upon the destruction of one class of property in order to save another which, in the judgment of the legislature, is of greater value to the public. It will not do to say that the case is merely one of a conflict of two private interests and that the misfortune of apple growers may not be shifted to cedar owners by ordering the destruction of their property; for it is obvious that there may be, and that here there is, a preponderant public concern in the preservation of the one interest over the other.

The case is Miller v Schoene, 276 U.S. 272 (1928).
posted by decathecting at 2:26 PM on April 30, 2011 [2 favorites]

I'm kinda glad I read the comments before I clicked the link.

Should I click the link or not? Is it that gross? I mean its just plants, right?
posted by hal_c_on at 6:53 PM on April 30, 2011

Don't worry, it's just plants. It's not like there's anything like the coconut crab, for instance. (Oh, sorry.)
posted by Lexica at 9:24 PM on April 30, 2011

cheezball copy. bitchin' life forms.
posted by Trochanter at 10:51 PM on April 30, 2011

Cracked can be funny, or even thought-provoking, but "shouldn't exist"? Really? By whose metric? The fact is, they DO exist, and no amount of OMG BRO CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS SHIT framing makes that actually funny or entertaining. If the material is strong enough, it'll stand on its own merits.

tl;dr – 10 Cracked Articles That Shouldn't Exist
posted by Eideteker at 2:53 PM on May 1, 2011 [1 favorite]