A Lesbian Weed Whipping
I’m not enough of a botanist to know what sort of weedy stems these old-time lesbians are employing for the whipping on this vintage French postcard, but the stems and flowers look somewhat like thistles to me, although not precisely like any of the varieties that grow in my part of North America:
The postcard itself might be from the Biederer/Ostra ouvre, but then again it might not; there were a lot of risque postcard publishers on “the continent” before WWII.
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Lovely picture. The plant is a Teasel – common and native to the UK. There are some in my garden right now.
Invasive to the US, so I’m guessing the picture is British, or maybe continental?
Teasels – when green as in the image they are prickly but likely fine for intended purpose. Once they dry the prickly heads can pierce the skin and break off potentially introducing a nasty fungus Sporotrichosis. Similar to rose thorns and other prickly plant material one needs to be careful no plant material is left to fester under the skin.
Ah! Thank you both. To me “teasel” was hitherto just a word from British children’s literature that meant “some kind of plant” to me, from context, but I didn’t have a visual notion of it.
In the era of this photograph so many naughty photos were published in France, often in the same labs and on the same stock as photographic postcards, that “French postcard” was a common euphemism for photographic porn. I would bet twenty euros that this image is from France.