Introduction
PARR@zodiac.rutgers.edu
Sun, 12 Sep 1993 01:48:14 -0400 (EDT)
Hello--
I've mainly been growing succulents and some miscellaneous odd house
plants lately, but I read some back issues of this list and am fascinated. I
guess I'll just lurk for a while, learning...but by way of introduction I
thought I would offer this quote. It's from J.-K. Huysman's _Against Nature_
(_A Rebours_) of 1884--a favorite of the English decadents and in places really
creepy:
But he did not linger over these plants, as he was waiting
impatiently for the series which particularly fascinated him,
those vegetable ghouls the carnivorous plants--the downy-rimmed
Fly-trap of the Antilles with its digestive secretions and its
curved spikes that interlock to fo form a grille over any insect
it imprisons; the Drosera of the peat- bogs, flaunting a set of
glandulous hairs; the Sarracena and the Cephalothus, opening
voracious gullets capable of consuming and digest- ing whole
chunks of meat; and finally the Nepenthes, which in shape and
form passes all the bounds of eccentricity.
Hope this is new to some of you; I especially like the phrase "those
vegetable ghouls"...
Matthew Parr
Rutgers U