This fierce blossom was caught yesterday in mid-act, bursting out of its pod on the green trunk of a palm at the Arboretum in Golden Gate Park. A similar exotic palm flourishes at sidewalk's edge on 16th Street in the Mission near Spencer Alley. I photographed one of its blooming-cycles a couple of years ago
here. But that specimen was nothing so vigorous as the one above, which puts me strongly in mind (I can't help it) of the baby monster bursting out of the human's chest in Ridley Scott's
Alien (1979).
