If there were awards in the flower world for doing things right, this would be an obvious nominee. This flower is the size of a very large fist. It doesn’t just bloom, it dominates. But it does have an eery sense of maybe feeding on small animals. Its beauty is not to be taken for granted. It’s not a flower that happens by the thousands, like daisies, or the minuscule blue flowers on mountain sage. It happens here and there with a sense of authority. I often reach out and touch the petals of of flowers, whether to greet them or to gage their thickness. But I have never reached out and touched one of these. It seems like it wants me to look and leave.