Spooky Plants
From ghostly blooms to creeping vines, wander through nature’s darker side.
Some plants are more than just strange—they’re spooky. As if beneath nature’s stillness, something quietly stirs. The Weeping Blue Atlas Cedar looms like a figure lurking in the shadows, its branches poised to strike. Doll’s Eye stares back with clusters of white orbs on red stalks, as if they’re watching, as if they know. Dead Man’s Fingers claw up through the soil, skeletal and reaching, while the Ghost Pipe, translucent and spectral, rises from the forest floor, like a spirit caught between worlds.
In art, plants do more than look devious—they act on it. One of the earliest examples of botanical horror, H.G. Wells’ 1894 The Flowering of the Strange Orchid, tells the story of an orchid that craves blood, its delicate beauty concealing a sinister secret. Today’s eco-horror echoes this fear: nature, often overlooked, is ready to fight back. As vines tighten and trees creak, we’re reminded who—or what—truly holds the upper hand.
This Halloween edition of Arrangements invites you into the world of spooky plants, explored through art, books, films and more. Dare to wander down this dark, winding path with me? Follow the moonlight but tread softly—the plants are alive, and they’re waiting.
Haley Barker’s oil painting draws you down a dirt path that creeps through dense, tangled greenery, illuminated by a bright, watchful moon. The scene feels suspended—part dream, part memory, a place of passage. As critic Barry Schwabsky observes, Barker creates spaces that slip between states of being. Closer up, “Orb Weaver” captures a delicate web shimmering in the foliage, a trap set by nature itself.
Marcus Leslie Singleton’s “The Shell, Shade Mobilizes” shows a man in a ghost costume, bouquet in hand, eyes peeking through the sheet. With loose, expressive brushstrokes, Singleton depicts a figure caught between hypervisibility and invisibility—a mystery hovering in the space between presence and absence.
Aaron Elvis Jupin’s airbrushed painting presents a butterfly in mid-flight, its wings carved with precise cutouts that resemble a jack-o'-lantern. Floating in front of blurred yellow flowers, the butterfly comes across as both a natural marvel and something otherworldly, teetering on the edge of the strange.
Kim Greem’s paintings seem to ripple with a life of their own. In the first, a fur-covered form arches downward, its soft, creature-like texture giving it an animated energy. The second focuses on a single, fuzzy leaf, surrounded by shadows of violet and black. Both pieces look alive, as though the plants themselves are creatures on the verge of transformation.
Mary Herbert's “Gathering” is like a glimpse into the spirit world—flowers hovering like specters, frozen in an ethereal aura. Delicate pastels blur their forms, capturing a moment where the natural world slips into the supernatural.
Jesse Jinghan Liu blends imagined worlds with personal emotion, using vivid color and soft light to evoke a sense of mystery. In “Night Watch,” three figures gather under the moon’s gaze, as a luminous, hypnotic plant draws them in as if under a spell.
Yuri Yuan’s oil painting shows a plant dissolving into shadow, barely outlined by starlight. It suggests that we’ve stumbled upon something we weren’t meant to see—a quiet scene where the night holds its breath. Yuan’s landscapes often mirror inner states, with this darkness hinting at something deeper.
Megan Marrin’s “The Hunger” portrays the corpse flower in full bloom, its towering spadix a brooding presence. Each piece in her series is named after a horror film, not only for the flower’s stench of rotting flesh, but for the anticipation surrounding its rare bloom—a spectacle of nature, unfolding with the same suspense as a horror film’s final act.
Sam Falls’ “The Pain Goes Right Inside” reveals a skeleton made from delicate petals, dissolving into the surrounding foliage. Falls’ technique physically embeds plants into the work, allowing them to wither and imprint on the canvas, expressing the beauty of decay and the intimate process of life fading back into the earth.
Sophia Moreno Bunge’s arrangement of carnivorous crimson pitcher plants, with their trumpet-shaped, ruffled hoods and intricate veining, rise like elegant traps, poised to ensnare whatever comes too close. To discover the inspirations behind her sculptural arrangements, read my interview with Sophia here.
Halloween is the perfect time to re-watch Little Shop of Horrors, where a humble florist shop’s seemingly innocent plant, Audrey II, demands blood and devours everything in its path. The film’s offbeat humor, twisted romance and musical numbers create a theatrical world that captures the quirky charm of spooky season.
Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic is a collection of short stories from the late 19th and early 20th centuries featuring “perilous plants, scary sprouts and frightening flowers.” One story centers on a girl raised to be as poisonous as the plants her father cultivates, while another is rooted in a cursed tree tied to a witch trial. For more plant-driven terror, check out Annihilation, The Ruins and The Willows.
A forest-scented perfume that’s also a ghost story? Yes, please. Fantôme de Maules by Stora Skuggan blends green leaves, bergamot and wildflowers with the deep, earthy notes of oakmoss and vetiver. Inspired by an elusive figure who roams the woods of Maules, this scent feels like stepping into the shadowy depths of a forgotten forest, where every rustle hints at something—or someone—vanishing into the trees.
Mycology expert Tom Volk launched his “Fungus of the Month” site in 1997, sharing rare mushrooms online before Google Images existed. That October, he featured the Jack-O-Lantern mushroom: “It should be fairly obvious from the picture where this fungus gets its common name—it's bright orange like the pumpkins used to make Jack-O-Lanterns,” he wrote that year. “However, it is not so obvious from the picture the other reason for the common name. This fungus actually glows in the dark!”
For a deeper dive into how plants intersect with folklore and storytelling, check out
’s interview with Oscar Salguero, curator of the Interspecies Library. They discuss the power of imagined plants and how they reflect our deeper anxieties about nature, touching on plant music, speculative literature and the history of fictional flora.
Haley Barker's painted worlds are magical.
This is such a magical, mystical plant post!