A collaborative archive of botanical anomalies. Every plant here is wrong; some are wrong in kind ways.https://wrongplants.org/enhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0542-thirty-round-tillandsia/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0542-thirty-round-tillandsia/A pressed Atacama air plant makes every circle near it exactly three diameters round, and a ship's purser had to restate its drum for customs.HerbariumGeometricNumericalhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0541-bad-faith-spruce/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0541-bad-faith-spruce/Paper pulped from a Carpathian spruce sheds the ink of any promise its writer means to break, and one herbalist's card has lost a child's dose.HerbariumEconomicChemicalhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0540-third-below-coelogyne/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0540-third-below-coelogyne/Lisu children raised under one Fugong chestnut can sing only a third below another voice; alone they make no note, and neither does the dog.HerbariumAcoustichttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0539-countersigned-rambler/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0539-countersigned-rambler/From 1904, whenever a Libau glassblower signed his name, his hand wrote the name of his rose instead, including on his will.HerbariumBureaucraticEncoded messagehttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0535-threshold-oboe-cane/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0535-threshold-oboe-cane/An oboe reed cut from Vukovar cane is silent except in doorways, and its maker listed 37 of them and sealed a 38th in a footnote.HerbariumAcousticGeometrichttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0534-mother-tongue-pondweed/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0534-mother-tongue-pondweed/A pondweed above a wartime Icelandic signal station gave the town the weather of whatever language was last spoken over its water.HerbariumMeteorologicalLinguistichttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0533-maker-s-hour-liverwort/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0533-maker-s-hour-liverwort/A Hardanger liverwort pulls every nearby clock to the local time of the town that made it, and a court once rebuilt a ship's galley from nine of them.HerbariumTemporalhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0532-fire-refusing-cane/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0532-fire-refusing-cane/A pressed bamboo cane is why a Tangier loft burned for nine hours in 1898 and nothing in it got warmer than 21 °C.HerbariumTerritorialNumericalhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0529-expected-value-indigo/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0529-expected-value-indigo/A false indigo pressed in 1915 keeps the sky over it at the average: 0.14 inches of rain a day at Yazoo City for seventy-six years.HerbariumMeteorologicalNumericalhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0526-honest-signal-saw-sedge/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0526-honest-signal-saw-sedge/A stand of saw-sedge in the Brière left lapwings unable to fake a broken wing and a guest's setter unable to play, until a hotel paved it over.HerbariumMimicryhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0525-stationmaster-s-rush/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0525-stationmaster-s-rush/A stationmaster pressed a rush from his own platform in 1954; everyone who has written about it since stays 11.4 km from that platform.HerbariumTerritorialNumericalhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0524-relay-laurel/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0524-relay-laurel/A Brazilian laurel with no scent in the air, whose smell came out of every radio in Worcestershire the morning its seed packet was opened on air.HerbariumChemicalhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0523-shubin-s-ribbon/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0523-shubin-s-ribbon/A kelp found in Siberian larch forest in 1887, and an auctioneer who acquired a limp the same week he wrote to deny it.HerbariumTemporalLinguisticUnstable genomehttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0522-stranger-s-cactus/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0522-stranger-s-cactus/In 1933 a Hoyvík woman asked a court to declare her husband an impostor, though the harbour clerk, the town and his wage book all disagreed.HerbariumEmotional responseBureaucratichttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0521-bonded-thyme/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0521-bonded-thyme/A creeping thyme seized at the Serbian border weighs 31 grams to its owner and cannot be moved by anyone else until the paperwork is signed.HerbariumBureaucraticGravitationalhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0520-hollow-elm/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0520-hollow-elm/An elm whose growth rings record the last words spoken near it each year — and which has started recording words that have not been spoken yet.HerbariumEncoded messageTemporalUnstable genomehttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0412-quorum-thistle/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0412-quorum-thistle/A thistle colony that voted, measurably, on where to spread next, and was destroyed after its third vote.HerbariumNon-standard basesUnstable genomehttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0303-cartographers-root/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0303-cartographers-root/A wild carrot whose taproot grows in the exact shape of the route to wherever its seed was collected.HerbariumEncoded messageMimicryhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0231-lamplighters-moss/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0231-lamplighters-moss/A cushion moss that photosynthesises from attention rather than light, and dies in rooms nobody visits.HerbariumEmotional responsehttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0217-fourth-cone-mammillaria/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0217-fourth-cone-mammillaria/A Kutaisi windowsill cactus flowers grey to every human eye and bright to every spectrometer, and one unclaimed exam answer names the colour.GlasshouseNon-standard basesLinguisticTemporalhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0216-company-mistletoe/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0216-company-mistletoe/From 1967 to 1994 a Te Anau florist could see herself only with someone else in the mirror, so her neighbour came round every morning at 7.40.GlasshouseBureaucraticUnstable genomehttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0215-freehold-glasswort/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0215-freehold-glasswort/A Tasmanian saltmarsh glasswort gives the crabs and one wombat sheltering in it freehold title, stamped and registered in Hobart.GlasshouseBureaucraticTerritorialhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0214-unheard-hour-hortensia/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0214-unheard-hour-hortensia/Walk the full 31 metres of this Penzance hydrangea hedge and no one can hear you for an hour, as a neighbour did at two in the morning in March 1971.GlasshouseAcousticHuman DNAhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0213-square-account-palm/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0213-square-account-palm/A fan palm from a Basque net-loft yard keeps the sky over the Palm House grey for as long as anyone beneath it owes money to anyone else.GlasshouseMeteorologicalEconomichttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0211-fog-lily/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0211-fog-lily/On fog nights in the St. John's Narrows, skippers steered home by a widow walking Signal Hill, because every compass near her lily pointed at her.GlasshouseLinguisticGeometrichttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0210-calicut-noon/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0210-calicut-noon/In a Leeds curry house, everything near this yam cast the shadow of the sun over Kozhikode, and the cook rang home by the salt cellar.GlasshouseGeometricTemporalMeteorologicalhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0209-tithe-map-pitcher/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0209-tithe-map-pitcher/A purple pitcher plant whose tin chapel turned up in a 1790 vestry minute, just in time to beat a council demolition order.GlasshouseTemporalBureaucratichttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0205-extra-place-basil/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0205-extra-place-basil/A fokontany-office basil from Toamasina adds one name to every list made beside it: a living person no register has ever recorded.GlasshouseNumericalBureaucratichttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0204-height-mark-sorghum/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0204-height-mark-sorghum/A Javanese sorghum whose stalks stop at the exact height of any child who stands beside them, and once stopped for the night watchman.GlasshouseNumericalEmotional responsehttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0203-grace-lily/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0203-grace-lily/A Lapland water lily that, for the nine weeks it is in flower, stops every legal deadline in sight of its pond: tax, leases and evictions.GlasshouseBureaucraticTemporalhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0202-quiet-crust/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0202-quiet-crust/A grey doorstep lichen from Mansourah that keeps a circle of perfect silence around itself, 2 mm wider every year.GlasshouseAcousticTerritorialhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0201-correspondence-orchid/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0201-correspondence-orchid/An orchid whose petals carry faint handwriting — always a letter of thanks, never to anyone the gardener knows.GlasshouseEncoded messageMimicryhttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0117-widows-fern/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/h-0117-widows-fern/An ordinary fern whose fronds uncurl only near the recently bereaved — and whose genome remembers who was lost.HerbariumHuman DNAEmotional responsehttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0115-sleepers-clover/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0115-sleepers-clover/A clover that closes its leaves at the exact moment anyone in the building falls asleep, and opens them for dreams that go well.GlasshouseExtinct genesEmotional responsehttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0042-mending-ivy/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0042-mending-ivy/A climbing ivy that slowly repairs whatever it grows over — cracked pots, torn paper, once a broken wrist.GlasshouseRestorativeUnstable genomehttps://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0007-funeral-laughter/https://wrongplants.org/specimens/g-0007-funeral-laughter/A marigold that sprouts only at funerals and makes the mourners remember something funny about the dead.GlasshouseEmotional responseTemporal