Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, a while back, declared the Ttan Arun (or Corpse Flower) the official flower of the Mike World Order. From time to time one gets news of a Titan Arun bloom in the news…

Today, from Cornwall, UK, we have news that a Titan Arun has bloomed. And bloomed in winter no less… The Reuters peice reads in part:

Unseasonably warm weather may have tricked the world’s smelliest plant into blooming in the middle of the northern hemisphere winter, botanists at the Eden Project where the native of Sumatra is housed, told Reuters.

The warmth of 2006 and mild winter to date have encouraged the Titan Arum or Corpse Flower into a phenomenal growth spurt and into flower — an event that usually happens only once every six to nine years.

“The Titan, standing at 164 cms tall is now giving off a revolting stink,” said curator Don Murray. “It is a cross between rotten cheese, dog poo and something dead.”

“Tonight the flowers will be in full bloom — as will the stench — and that will last through Tuesday and Wednesday. But by Thursday it will have started to die back,” he told Reuters from the project in Cornwall 220 miles southwest of London.

Murray said it was highly abnormal for the plant to flower in winter.

“Last year’s unprecedented warm temperatures and high sunshine levels and the extremely mild winter we are currently experiencing have to be considered as a factor in this rare occurrence,” he said.

Your Maximum Leader is sure this is is a subtle reinforcement of global warming stories that Reuters likes. The sunlight must have tricked the Titan Arun, which one expects lives in a greenhouse, into thinking it is summer in Sumatra and not winter in Cornwall.

It is quite cold here at the Villainschloss… Definately winter.

Carry on.