New Flash Fiction: Mafia Flowers

Today's contributor is Mark Mills who reports on an interesting botanical phenomenon that can be observed in Arizona. When not collecting plants, Mark is an English Instructor at Northern Kentucky University and has been published in Tor.com, Short Story America, Pill Hill Press, RuneWright, Aurora Wolf Press, Bards and Sages Quarterly and other publications.

Mafia Flowers
by Mark Mills

Scientific name: Utricularia puzo
Water: Once every two weeks
Soil: Extremely dry
Flowers/Fruit: See below
Range: Western Arizona with occasional sprinklings in southern Nevada and eastern California

The Sunda plant is similar to the Utricularia sandersonii, a bladderwort native of South Africa, but each spring it sprouts the source of its popular name: Mafia flowers. 

In late February to mid March, the buds  appear as pinkish blobs framed by jet-black fibers but within a few weeks are identifiable as human faces. As soon as their tongues develop they bellow, cajole, and snort in Italian, English, or a combination of the two, usually demanding upmost respect and thin slices of proscuttio. Instead of a larynx, the buds speak by an internal mechanism that rubs rough fiber against a thorn-like growth, amplified by opening of the leaf rosette. As of this writing, it’s recognized as a unique characteristic within the plant kingdom.

It’s entirely possible to name individual buds and they will respond to “Vito,” “Tony,” or “Michael” but this can be heartbreaking the latter days of August when the buds begin to droop. Although they show no sign of mental deterioration (if such a pulpy mass can be described as “mental), no amount of splicing or fertilizer can maintain the flowers beyond early autumn.

Although the folklore of the Hohokam Indians contains multiple references to talking plants, it seems clear the Sundra plant is a joke of mad scientists or God. To quote one of my more articulate buds: “You want I should rub you out? Enough with the pruning!” 

Are these the words of random evolution? I have my suspicions.

As a young man, on the way to Yuma, I once stopped at a roadside florist and observed a Sunda  variation that developed yellowish buds and faces of the Japanese Yukuza. Like a fool, I left it, intending to purchase it on the way home but I was delayed in my visit and on the return trip, I could find no trace of the shop. Yukuza flowers seem extinct after my briefest of sightings.

Almost certainly it was a separate species and, as the first to scientifically describe it, I would have had the honor of giving it a name. Alas, after nearly forty years of searching, I have never had another such opportunity and my chances of immortality dwindle until, like a wondrous species of plant, it too fades into the darkness.