You do realize when plants are named by association with anatomical features, they don’t have to replicate them exactly, right? Or would you, if you were a lioness, sarcastically scoff at the idea that the dandelion had anything to do with lion’s teeth because your wonderful pearly whites weren’t floppy and green and attached to a leaf?
Nah, I can at least see a mane in the white fluff of dandelion seeds. I don’t see any resemblance to my body in a venus flytrap.
And to the other poster who commented on my comment: I was criticizing the quote posted, not the person who posted it. So your second guess was right on: those Victorians had issues!
I too thought it was obvious that it’s in reference to its resemblance to a human vagina.
Coincidentally, one of my favorite episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond was on last night. It’s the one where Marie creates this.
The spines only look like teeth when the trap is closing. Otherwise they spread out and look more like hairs.
Cowries have long been used as a female fertility symbol due to their resemblance to female genitalia, but also have a rather dentate appearance.
[junior modding ;)]OMG, Colibri, put those links in spoilers! Know ye not the two-click rule?[/junior modding ;)]
I don’t know… I would be more inclined to agree with you that it’s a reach if we were only talking about the exterior of the traps, but the pink/red interior sells it for me. A different color would be enough to change my mind, but I can’t help but think they’re a little naughty the way they are.
So maybe I have issues too. I won’t necessarily argue that point.
Slang and its Analogues, volume III, published in 1893, on page 47, lists one of the meanings of fly-trap as “the female pudendum.” It offers no citations to suggest when this meaning was current, if it ever really was.
That is sexist, but they probably didn’t let women write in 1893. 
You all realize, of course, that flowers and seeds are a plant’s way of making more plants.
When you stop to smell the roses, you are sniffing a plant’s sex organs. When you admire the beauty of a dandelion puff, you are a plant perv.
Incidentally, the specific epithet, muscipula, doesn’t mean “fly-trap,” but “mouse-trap,” which is perhaps a more modern slang term for vagina.
Dandelions are not so named because of the fluffy seed heads, or any resemblance those may have to the mane of a lion. The name is a corruption of dent-de-lion (French for ‘Lion’s tooth’) - and the reference is to the toothed serrations of the leaf edges, not the flowers or seeds.
Butterflies are essentially prostitutes.
What? All this talk about plants/flowers and their naming as a result of their resemblance to human genitalia and no mention of orchids?
There’s also anthurium, also known as “boy flower”.
I recall reading somebody here a couple years ago saying something close to “A bouquet is just a bunch of dead disembodied sex organs. Think about *that *the next time you give or receive flowers.”
Kinda took the bloom off the rose for me it did. Though it also makes the fact that people like their symbolism at some deep primal level make a lot more sense.
As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.
The hideous sexual parts we should so scrupulously avoid are formed into an even more hideous single structure.
I always assumed it was due to the traps resembling a clam or scallop shell.
As in the famous “the birth of venus”
The dandelion puff is all about seeds. It’s not pervy to think a … is there a collective noun for a gaggle of babies?