I ate 27 flowers, but the universe didn't explode, how unfortunate...
From the issues I have only seen black bars on sprites and how some sprites are overlaid on top of those sprites that are closer to the player.
Also if there are multiple levels and that's me being silly and not finding that another flower, i might suggest counter of flowers in the level, that is, it will show not only the number of flowers already eaten, but also how many flowers there are in the level.