 | Odd-Shaped Flowers
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Fetid Adder's-tongue
Scoliopus bigelovii
Slink Pod, Slink Lily, Brownies, California Fetid Adder's-tongue
Description A peculiar little plant with 3-12 leafless, 3-sided stalks, each topped by 1 dull reddish-brown and green flower, growing between 2 basal leaves mottled with maroon patches.
Flowers: About 1" (2.5 cm) wide; sepals 3, lanceolate, spreading, greenish with maroon veins; petals 3, erect, horn-like, maroon; stamens 3.
Leaves: 2 1/2-8" (6.5-20 cm) long, broadly lanceolate.
Fruit: 3-angled capsule.
Height: To 8" (20 cm).
Flower February-March.
Habitat Moist woods.
Range Coast Ranges of northern California.
Discussion The genus name, from the Greek skolios ("crooked") and pous ("foot"), as well as the common names Slink Lily and Slink Pod, refer to the way the flower stalk bends and sprawls on the ground as the pod matures. The flowers have an unpleasant odor (hence the common name Fetid Adder's-tongue), which is what probably attracts flies as pollinators. The smaller Hall's Fetid Adder's-tongue (S. hallii) grows in western Oregon. Another common name for S. bigelovii is Brownies.
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Fetid Adder's-tongue