Check out some of the world’s weirdest flowers

In the world of floristry beauty is an everyday thing, but as with most things in life, beauty is often in the eye of the beholder. Flowers across Melbourne scoured the globe to find the weirdest flowers in the world so take a seat, grab a drink and get ready to check out 40 flowers that are stranger than fiction. Unfortunately none of these are currently available for flower delivery in Sydney (or Melbourne).  See below after the jump...

The beautiful Snake Gourd flower may look like it belongs on a festively wrapped present, but it’s actually a vegetable! The Snake Gourd originated as a wild vegetable that grew in India, but these days it is cultivated around the world. It’s a member of the pumpkin family (like all gourds) and shares similarities with the bitter melon plant, as the long vegetables, it produces taste quite sour and bitter. Despite its terrible taste, the fruit from the Snake Gourd flower is used in a variety of different medical applications, and the reddish fruit inside an overly-ripe gourd can also be used as a tomato substitute when cooking. It may be named the Snake Gourd, but we think it looks more like a spider.

 If you’ve never seen a Parrot Flower before you’re not alone. The Parrot Flower below is a Thailand native, is classified as endangered and therefore not allowed to leave the country. The neat thing about the flower of this rare species of balsam is that when you look at its side profile, it looks just like a parrot or

cockatoo in flight! Funny thing is, when images of this flower began to circulate across the Internet they were dismissed as being “digitally manipulated” or Photoshopped because very few people had actually seen one since they are so extremely rare in the wild, and it’s illegal to remove them

Bee Orchid (Ophrys apifera)

This happy little guy gets its name from its uncanny resemblance to a smiling bumblebee; that is if bumblebees could smile. Its name comes from the Greek word “Ophrys” meaning eyebrow, perhaps referring to the fuzzy bits around the edge of the flower. The Bee Orchid is widespread across Europe the Middle East and even North Africa. However, it’s becoming more and more scarce because the propagation process is so complicated. You see, the Bee Orchid requires a symbiotic relationship with a particular type of fungus to successfully grow, making transplanting tough. This orchid is more clever than it appears; the flowers are almost exclusively self-pollinating in the northern ranges, but the colouring and shape of the flower mimic the look and smell of a female bee which entices male bees towards it to mate, thus expediting the pollination process!

Source: Online