Nature is pretty incredible and comes up with some amazing things. That’s one of the reasons it’s so sad to see how much damage humans are doing to the environment on a daily basis—beautiful and awe-inspiring things like the Crotalaria cunninghamii are becoming less and less likely and could disappear altogether soon. In the meantime, let’s appreciate the incredible flower whose petals look exactly like tiny hummingbirds.
- The plant is, of course, native to Australia. The Reddit user -OctopusPrime posted the photo to the NatureIsF**kingLit sub after snapping it while out and about. Unsurprisingly, it immediately started racking up the upvotes and comments, many of which wondered what the plant was and where it was found. OP soon replied that it was the Crotalaria cunninghamii and the photo was snapped in Exmouth, Western Australia. See, just because they have loads of terrifying things doesn’t mean Australia doesn’t also have tons of beauty!
- The hummingbird flower is one of nature’s coolest tricks. Biology enthusiasts in the comments of the post couldn’t decide if the flower’s resemblance to the hummingbird was an example of simulacrum or pareidolia. The first is when an object purposely tries to resemble something else while the second is when the observer of said object gives that quality to the object, if that makes sense. The Crotalaria cunninghamii could be an example of both.
- One thing’s for sure: it’s amazing. The flowers of this plant don’t just look similar to hummingbirds, they look almost identical to the animal, which is pretty mind-blowing. If you looked closely, you might not notice that you weren’t looking at real birds but instead a plant, which to me is amazing.
- If you lived in the right type of climate, you could have some of these in your own garden. The hummingbird flowers do best in warm, sunny weather but they could live in slightly cooler temps too if planted at the correct time and handled with care (though frost will kill them off). All in all, they’re a very short-lived shrub, which is a shame. Who wouldn’t want to look at these 24/7?
