You push the button.

Ding.

The table and game (and chair) have gone poof. They are no more. They no longer exist within your field of vision. They have- ok, I’m done, sorry.

Instead, the floor around you has been built up with dirt, and hundreds of wildflowers are blooming.

Are they really wildflowers if they’ve been specifically planted, though?

Eh, that’s a question for philosophers.

Well, I consider myself an ameture philosopher (in case you haven’t noticed). So let’s debate! Or rather, I’ll go off on a rant and you’ll be forced to listen to me! Fun!

Ok so, wildflowers are, by basic definition, flowers that are wild. Wild implies that no one planted them. However, one can buy “wildflower mix seeds” at any store with a Garden Center. This means they will be specifically planted in a certain place, making them no longer “wild”.

However, the flowers which are sold as “wildflowers” aren’t flowers that have been… tampered with? Changed? By humans. The “wildflowers” planted in someone’s front yard are genetically the same as the true wildflowers which sprouted randomly in the front yard of the house next to it. But the roses that grow in the second house’s backyard garden are in no way wild. There are so-called “wild roses”, but there are hundreds if not thousands of varieties of roses in the world, most of which have been specifically bred and engineered to look and smell the way they do, including the roses which have “wild” in their name.

So there is a clear distinction between “wild” and “not wild” in that sense.

I suppose we can look at “wild” in the sense of “would this plant grow here if there wasn’t a building here”. Well, let’s see.

You’ve got some irises, a couple lilies, some yellow pansies, a couple poppies, plenty of blue flax, a… “wavy-leafed soap plant”? In one corner is an innocence, and in the other corner is a flowering huckleberry bush. All those plants are native to this area.

Since all these plants may or may not have grown randomly and wildly on the lot this building now occupies (but all most definitely could have grown here, given that it’s in the right climate and geographical location), I’m going to say that yes, these plants can be called wildflowers.

...I’m glad we figured that out.

So, you’re in a room full of flowers! What will you do?

You decide to stop and smell the roses. As the saying goes. Because there are no roses.

You go up to one called blue flax, and take a big sniff. It smells… I don’t know how it smells. Honestly, I don’t have much of a sense of smell, so I can’t describe the smells of most flowers. And wikipedia doesn’t describe flower smells, for some reason. I think that it should.

Someone needs to add a smell section to flowers on wikipedia.

Get on that, internet.

You finish smelling the blue flax, and move on to all the flowers in turn.

They have smells.

Yes.

How enjoyable.

You like arranging flowers. It brings a certain satisfaction that few other things can emulate.

So you step carefully through the plants, careful to crush as few as possible, and pick some of the most beautiful blooms. Doing this, you notice that there’s a hole in the wall that bees are coming through. Presumably these are the bees that you met earlier. Thankfully, they seem to be concentrated on the huckleberry bush at the moment, so you don’t have to worry about them.

After collecting a fair amount of blooms, you sit down near the button, where some concrete is still visible, and arrange them. Carefully. Into a bouquet.

It’s lovely. Beautiful. Truly a work of art. Well done. The people who clean this place will thank you for it, I’m sure.

You walk over to a flower and look at it judgingly. It’s the Common Star Lily. There’s a cluster of six-petaled flowers on top, which look pretty hardy.

Personally, I don’t like these flowers. I have vague memories of “bad” from when I was five or six, centered on one of these. It’s weird, and I have zero clue why, but looking at the reference picture on wikipedia is filling me with negative emotions. I don’t remember eating one and becoming sick (which, given that the scientific name is toxicoscordion fremontii, and they’re also known as fremont’s deathcamas, I’d be willing to bet that they’re somewhat lethal). I don’t remember picking one and getting yelled at for ruining someone’s garden (something that happened more than once). I just… something about the stem. I don’t know. I just look at the picture and my long-forgotten younger self tells me to stay away.

Oddly enough, the only other flower that gives me those feelings is geraniums. But I know that my aversion to geraniums is due to knocking over someone's planter and being yelled at. It's going to bug me not knowing why I don't like the lily.

Anyways, having been subjected to my rant, you decide that this is not the flower for you, and turn to a different flower.

The one you’re looking at now is the state flower of California. It’s a lovely bright orange poppy, with four soft petals. When I was five or six my mother told me it was illegal to pick them, and I’m just now realizing that may have been a lie to get me to stop picking flowers from stranger’s gardens.

You know enough about poppies in general to know that they aren’t poisonous. Poppy seeds are sold as ingredients in baking, and the flowers themselves can be used in salads.

You pick one and pop it into your mouth. It isn’t very big, so you pick five or six more and stuff them into your mouth, too. Don’t want the first one to get lonely, after all.

And then you… nod, and turn back to the button.

You… You aren’t going to eat them? Just keep them in your mouth, with the shark tooth?

…...Ooooookay. Sure. You do you. Why not.

...weirdo…

Having enjoyed your stay with the flowers, you decide it is now time to leave. You take one last look around, drinking in the colors and smells, and turn back to the button.

DO YOU PRESS THE BUTTON? Yes No