Random plant event: Polyscias fruticosa budding

We have a single ming aralia (Polyscias fruticosa) at work, which is a little bit ugly and expensive, so I expect to be spending quite a bit of time with it. I don't, however, spend a lot of time thinking about it lately, because there's been so much else going on, with the tropical order and the spring annuals before it.

So imagine my surprise yesterday when I looked at it and saw flower buds. They're not exciting flower buds, by any stretch of the imagination, nor are they actually open yet, but even so: not something you see every day. In fact, not something I've seen ever. And there are a lot of them:


It's anybody's guess what these flowers will look like when they finally open (anybody's except for the people who have seen Polyscias flowers before, I mean), but they look like they're going to be complicated. I count like 25-30 individual buds in each head, here, and something like nine or ten heads:


So stay tuned, gentle readers. If and when these buds open, you'll get to see them. Unless somebody buys it, in which case we'll have a contest to see who can imagine the best ming aralia flowers.