The Pittosporum revolutum (also known as Wild Yellow Jasmine, Rough fruit Pittosporum) is fruiting. The warty, yellow pods have opened like a wide jaw displaying a mouthful of swollen shiny bright red seeds. I think how these “mouths” look so much like a sci-fi monster, perhaps aliens from a planet far, far away. I feel myself recoil. Then I pull myself up—it’s not the pods that look like a monster but the other way around. The sci-fi imaginings have been dug out of the depths of the plant, animal— natural world around us. So pervasive the media/film/TV world, we see the monster before we see the real world!
