ABSTRACT
In an 1884 article in the Cornhill Magazine titled “Queer Flowers,” the popular science writer and novelist Grant Allen discussed what he dubbed the “Bohemians of the vegetable world,” a variety of “originally minded and eccentric” plants that reject the industrious bee as a means of fertilization and instead consort with “more original insect guests,” seducing some who already exhibit a “perversity of disposition,” and others who are hapless dupes, into a variety of non-normative encounters to satisfy their appetites. These “queerest and most singular of all flowers”—examples of unnatural-seeming nature-exhibit a variety of improper behaviors, including erotic deception, domination, and devouring.1
