The Disquieting Threat of Floral Hazards

He avoided florists, those over-cultivated blooms in their overheated shops seemed to be a perversion of nature. He shunned all those floral gangsters; the vainglorious gladioli, eugenically forced greenhouse geraniums with their large Shar-Pei heads. Garish claustrophobic hosts of peonies pressing-in and crowding his mind with a ballooning menace. His stomach trembled when confronted with petulant Pelargonium or the silent perfumed farts of the deadly Dahlia. Charles Darwin, thought these latter-day angiosperms as, “an abominable mystery.” They are life-forms born of missing links, genetically modified to eat oxygen out of human brains. They are the epitome of those hard drugs that invade our senses. For him, the Day Lily was a pall-bearing pale monstrosity. Seemingly innocuous bunches of Mums are well known to gather in smug mobs at a time of year when our greatest need is for fresh air. Passing all flower shops he cringes away, and will not pay a penny for any kind of noxious poesy or floral frippery.