( A HORTICULTURAL HORROR STORY ) by Huw Collingbourne

 

The thing in the propagator was coming along nicely. Reg Stipple peered through the condensation-streaked plastic lid and smiled with satisfaction. After more than fifty years as a plantsman and grower, Reg had seen some extraordinary sights. But never in all his days had he seen anything quite as strange and beautiful as this.

Of course, not everyone could appreciate such a thing. Violet had never liked any of his more exotic specimens. Her tastes had always tended to the quaint and twee. Cottage gardens. Snapdragons and hollyhocks. Old-fashioned roses rambling over pergolas, for God's sake. For most of his married life, Reg had gone along with it. He'd laboriously weeded and mowed, tended to the bedding in summer and the mulching in autumn for year after tedious year.

And then the turning point had come, about ten years ago now, on the day when Reg had first set eyes on the insectivorous plants at Kew. It was the Pitcher Plants that had captured his imagination - the long snake-like hoods of the Cobra Lily, Darlingtonia californica, the deadly drowning pools of the Purple-spotted pitcher, Nepenthes hookeriana and the rancorous fly-filled bowls of the Huntsman's Cap, Sarracenia purpurea.

The very next week Reg had ordered half a dozen insectivores from a specialist nursery in Cheshire. They were all commonplace varieties - a couple of sundews, a Venus Flytrap and a few small pitcher plants. But it was a start. At least they weren't hollyhocks or petunias or sodding Busy Lizzies!

Predictably, Violet hated them all. They were unnatural, she said, and her only consolation was that they were certainly just a passing phase like everything else in Reg's life.

But it wasn't a passing phase. Oh no. Not this time. Reg had become fascinated by his plants. He would spend hour upon hour watching flies struggling against the sticky hairs of the sundew or the grasping claws of the FlyTraps. Any free time he had was spent in search of grasshoppers hiding in the uncut grass of the lawn. Reg would watch, entranced, as the little insects slid inexorably down the throats of the ever-hungry pitcher plants, unable to clamber up against the slick, downward-pointing hairs.

Reg, in short, had never been so happy.

Over the next few years Reg continued to seek out ever stranger and more exotic blooms. No longer content with the predictable offerings of garden centres and seed catalogues, he sought further afield. He wrote both to eminent botanists and to mercenary plant-hunters the world over. Soon his collection included such wonders as the foul-smelling Carrion Flower, Stapelia variegata, and the Rat-Eating Pitcher Plant of Borneo, Nepenthes coccinea. Reg still laughed to this day when he remembered the fuss that Violet made after finding a partly digested mouse in one of its bowls.

Oh yes, the propagator was worth its weight in gold. Reg had raised most of his collection from seeds and spores sent to him from sources as far away as New Zealand, Malaysia and Peru. The propagator nurtured them out of their dormancy and through the first delicate stages of germination. It was a professional quality item and it had cost Reg a good deal more than he could really afford. But, by golly, he'd never regretted the expense.

Its solid metal base housed a thermostatically controlled heating element. On top of this, Reg had laid a sheet of capillary matting which he watered daily in order to maintain an optimally warm and humid internal atmosphere. The whole thing was enclosed by a huge cover formed of a sheet of tough polythene stretched over an aluminium frame. In all it was more than six feet long, three feet wide and, from its base to the apex of its cover, it was two feet high. It stood on a large wooden trestle in Reg's bedroom. He and Violet hadn't shared a bedroom in many years and, as she'd told him repeatedly, she had no intention of sharing a bedroom with those ungodly plants!

The next major event in Reg's life was the acquisition of a Rafflesia arnoldii, reputedly the biggest flower in the world and, in Reg's highly partisan opinion, one of the most beautiful.

For a long time, this flower was the prize of Reg's collection. In its native Indonesia, the Rafflesia parasitises the stems and roots of certain woody vines. To make it feel more at home, Reg cultivated his Rafflesia on the stems and trunks of some Datura plants from his greenhouse. Reg had long ago ceased to be interested in the toxic and hallucinogenic properties of Datura. These days, Daturas were becoming quite ordinary. By golly, just any old run-of-the mill sort of gardener could now buy the damn' things mail-order, if you've ever heard of such a thing! Reg had not the slightest qualm about sacrificing them to his Rafflesia.

The only trouble with Rafflesia was the smell. In the hot days of summer it stank to high heaven. Of rotting flesh. It is a stink which is as irresistible to flies as nectar is to bees. At first, Reg was irritated by the hordes of bluebottles which had apparently taken up permanent residence in his bedroom. But in time he got used to them.

When his Rafflesia eventually flowered, Reg felt certain that this must be the crowning glory of his horticultural achievements. After so many years of tending and planting and potting and pruning, Reg could go no further.

And then, one day, he received news of an astonishing discovery. High in the Barisan Mountains of Sumatra, east of Padang, another and even more remarkable flower had been found, as yet unclassified but thought to be a distant relative of Rafflesia itself. But the flowers of this new plant, were even bigger - a single bloom could measure up to forty-two inches across, compared with Rafflesia arnoldii's maximum of a mere three feet. And, most interesting of all, this new discovery didn't parasitise other plants. It lived on the bodies of animals. It had been discovered engorged upon the cadaver of a putrefying goat. The local tribespeople called it the Corpse Flower.

Naturally, exportation of so rare and fabulous a plant was strictly forbidden. But this was no more than a minor setback to a man of Reg's experience. Over the years, he had found that most plants, no matter how rare, could be obtained at a price.

His regular supplier in Indonesia, a freelance plant hunter by the name of name of Agung Ffitch-Johnson, had informed Reg that an associate of his, a young botanical research student from one of the less well-known institutes in Java, had been surprised to observe, upon returning from a visit to the plant's secret habitat, that some seeds had adhered to the inside linings of his jacket pocket. These seeds had now fallen into the hands of Mr Ffitch-Johnson who would be only too pleased to entrust them to such a famous and respected botanical researcher as Reg Stipple.

Germination proved to be not only simple but rapid. The seeds were placed inside a fold of pig's liver and maintained at a constant temperature of eighty degrees Fahrenheit. After just two hours there were already signs of roots fanning out into the rotting meat and by the following day some leaf-shoots had also sprouted.

A couple of days later, Reg transplanted the tiny seedlings into larger pots. The compost was his own recipe: two parts John Innes Number Two, one of well-rotted farmyard manure and three of finely minced pig lung. In less than a fortnight, the first leathery flowers had begun to appear and a few days after that came the most beautiful vermilion seed pods, fat and slick like small blood sausages.

Then, just when everything seemed to be going so well, there was that unfortunate incident with the cat. Poor old Bumbles. He'd been a beautiful, sweet tempered old moggie and Reg missed him greatly. How he'd got into the bedroom in the first place was a mystery. And how he'd managed to get under the hood of the propagator was an even greater one. But old Bumbles had a terrible fondness for meat - no matter how old and decayed it might be.

By the time Reg found him, old Bumbles was almost unrecognisable. Indeed, he would have been unrecognisable were it not for his name tag and collar. Inside the steamy propagator, a new flower was blooming over a seething mass of roots, tendrils, flesh and fur.

When Bumbles failed to turn up for his afternoon meal that day, Violet started worrying. When he was still missing the following morning, she became distraught. Reg was unable to console her. It was, said his wife, all Reg's fault, the cat had never liked him and now old Bumbles had run away for ever.

Reg told Violet he felt sure the cat would be back. In time. He even put a card in the local newsagents - 'Lost tabby. Answers to the name of Bumbles. £100 reward.'

It's just as well Violet didn't know the truth about old Bumbles, Reg thought. Because even though it had been an accident - a case, as one might say, of 'death by misadventure' - if Violet should have come across the remains of her beloved pussy in that propagator, there would have been no reasoning with her.

Even as it was, Reg was getting more than his fair share of blame. Did the ingratitude of the woman know no bounds? After all, he'd put up £100 of his own money as a reward. And what did Violet do? Praise his generosity? You must be kidding - all she could do was moan!

Reg's lucky chance came one bright, drizzly morning towards the end of September when Violet was pottering about giving the roses their autumn trim. She was dead-heading the Rambling Rector when she slipped and pruned right though her green-leather gardening gloves.

It was all Reg's fault, of course. She'd told him at the time that the secateurs were far too sharp for roses. And besides, she shouldn't have been doing the roses in the first place. Not with her back and certainly not in that awful weather. But if she didn't do them nobody else would. Reg was always too busy growing monstrosities in his bedroom.

Reg, meanwhile, fussed and tended to his wife's every unreasonable whim. First he sat her down in a comfortable chair, which was quite the wrong thing to do since the blood was pouring down Violet's hand at the time and could easily have stained the velveteen chair coverings, then he brought her a plaster which was a stupid thing to do since the cut clearly needed to be washed and bandaged.

It was when he passed his bedroom door, on the way to get the bandages from the bathroom, that the idea occurred to him.

He brought a bowl of tepid water and a clean flannel to wash Violet's hand. He carefully dabbed at the cut with a ball of cotton wool soaked in iodine while Violet whined on at him about something or other. Finally, he placed a piece of soft lint against the wound and bound it tightly with a bandage.

The bandage, of course, was done up far too tightly and inexpertly. But then that was typical, of Reg, wasn't it. Not only would it hurt her and restrict the blood supply, but it would also make her an object of ridicule when she went shopping in the village. But, for once, Reg didn't really mind his wife's criticism. At least, she hadn't noticed the three small brown specks on the inner side of the lint - the side facing towards the wound.

Ah, yes, the thing in the propagator was coming along very nicely indeed. The smell was a bit strong, perhaps, and the bluebottles were becoming more of a nuisance than ever. But the plant was thriving. Why, even now a magnificent flower was spreading its petals through the gaping hole of his wife's mouth. And there was a delicate wet plopping sound as a new bud pushed itself through the pupil of her left eye.

Reg had always said that the propagator was worth its weight in gold. Oh yes, it had cost him a good deal more than he could really afford. But by God, he didn't regret a penny of it.

Copyright © 1995 Huw Collingbourne