bract

The real flowers are small, yellow and appear at the tip of the stem surrounded by the bract.

Perhaps a tool could be invented that would firmly hold each bract while one scrapes the flesh with teeth, similar to asparagus thongs or little forks for holding a boiled ear of sweet corn.

Should you need reminding, the anthurium is that plastic-y looking plant with a fingerlike spadix rising out of a flat shiny red bract, which has been referred to, for reasons that require no explanation, as “penis on a platter.”

Instead it is achieved by breeding to increase the red pigmentation in the layers of bract cells.

Visitors get to see what the wildling looks like, a tall, leggy bush with bract clusters isolated at the end of long branches.