Rotten Botany: Darkly Deceptive, Bizarrely Beautiful & Oddly Alluring Plants

A gardener's guide to the dark side of nature--a world filled with botanical oddities that will haunt your dreams and inspire your own truly twisted green space.

Rotten Botany invites you on a chillingly delightful journey with unique-plant enthusiast Varla A. Ventura, who unearths the hidden wonders and unsettling secrets of the plant kingdom.

Beyond the eerie aesthetics, Rotten Botany delves into each plant's scientific and common names, origins, ethnobotanical and folkloric uses, and fascinating lore. You'll also find practical details such as growth habits, growing zones, and cultivation tips, allowing you to nurture your own collection of "rottanicals." Prepare to encounter real plants that seem ripped from the pages of a horror novel:

• Lovely Lilies of Death: From the infamous corpse plant, with its fetid stench, to the haunting vampire lily, these blooms will both fascinate and repel.
• Rotten Ornamentals: Explore the dramatic bat plant, the eerie black mondo grass, and the whimsical Nightmare Before Christmas tree.
• Carnivores: Witness the cunning traps of the Venus flytrap and the exotic beauty of various pitcher plants.
• The Deception of Orchids: Uncover mysterious Dracula orchids and elusive ghost orchids.
• The Poison Path: Learn about the deadly beauty of plants such as castor bean, datura, and deadly nightshade, along with their historical uses and inherent dangers.

Varla A. Ventura is the author of several books, including Enchanted Plants, Among the Mermaids, and The Book of the Bizarre. As a lover of all things strange, Varla's interests extend into the weirdness and magic of the plant kingdom. With a deep fascination with folklore and medicinal plants, she has been studying herbalism and botany for more than thirty years. Her plant knowledge comes from a combination of experimentation, formal classes in botany, and working in the horticultural industry for fifteen years. She ran a retail nursery in Portland, Oregon, as well as in San Francisco, California, and operated her own landscaping business for more than ten years. She is also the botanical brain behind Rotten Botany, a website dedicated to unusual plants. When not writing, she can be found wandering around the Minnesota woods or tending her poison garden.