If I had photoshop and photoshop skills, I’d have included an image of a rose wearing brass goggles. Since I have neither, can you imagine it, please?

And after all that, I’m not even posting on intelligent roses (all perfume and thorns) taking over the world.

I have a steampunk idea (it’s not original, just intriguing) of plant breeding — hybrid plants that drug people with their perfume, produce strange food (like the breadplant being sweetened to produce bread and butter pudding fruits) and generally contribute to mayhem and good times.

The Victorians were adventurers and brought back exotic specimens. Anything could be possible.

It’s an idea I dearly love (and I should admit a bias against genetically modified food, so the moral lesson implicit in these steampunk hybrids is clear). Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit in my current steampunk novella, nor the one I’m contemplating writing. So, I’ve stuck the idea here, on Improbability Wednesday, to remind me.

Who knows what a cactus could be capable of?