By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Flowering of the Strange Orchid’ is a short story by H. G. Wells (1866-1946), first published in the Pall Mall Budget on 2 August 1894. In some ways a forerunner to later narratives like Little Shop of Horrors, the story is an unsettling tale about a parasitical species of plant which feeds upon the blood of a man who collects orchids.