amorpho-what??
Friday was lovely in New York. A perfect day for blowing off work. Which I would never do normally, except that as it turns out it was also the day that the Brooklyn Botanical Garden's titan arum decided to bloom.
For those of you not in the know, the titan arum comes from the jungles of Sumatra. It is one of the largest, stinkiest flowers in the world, with a smell that's supposed to be almost indescribably rank and terrible. Indeed, it's popularly also known as the "corpse flower," which I of course find intensely cool. And not only that but, well, the critter's scientific name is Amorphophallus titanum, and not without reason. Oddly enough, in a much earlier incarnation of this blog, I kept a list of "disturbing words," [sorry, the links won't work on this page, I'm not republishing the entire 1.0 version of Joe's Gloomy Spot...] and Amorphophallus was on it. So I'm previously acquainted, at least in theory, with the corpse flower.
As if this thing doesn't have enough names already, the BBG named its pet corpse flower "Baby," which kind of evokes small talking pigs, and kind of evokes Audrey 2 at the same time.
And they don't bloom just every day; in fact only very rarely. The last time one bloomed in these parts was around the 1939 World's Fair.
So let's recap:
Sadly as it turns out the stench, while powerful, is not long lived, and by the time I got to the garden on Friday afternoon, the flower was spectacular, but no longer stinky. Still it was a nice reason to get out of work.
For those of you not in the know, the titan arum comes from the jungles of Sumatra. It is one of the largest, stinkiest flowers in the world, with a smell that's supposed to be almost indescribably rank and terrible. Indeed, it's popularly also known as the "corpse flower," which I of course find intensely cool. And not only that but, well, the critter's scientific name is Amorphophallus titanum, and not without reason. Oddly enough, in a much earlier incarnation of this blog, I kept a list of "disturbing words," [sorry, the links won't work on this page, I'm not republishing the entire 1.0 version of Joe's Gloomy Spot...] and Amorphophallus was on it. So I'm previously acquainted, at least in theory, with the corpse flower.
As if this thing doesn't have enough names already, the BBG named its pet corpse flower "Baby," which kind of evokes small talking pigs, and kind of evokes Audrey 2 at the same time.
And they don't bloom just every day; in fact only very rarely. The last time one bloomed in these parts was around the 1939 World's Fair.
So let's recap:
- Rare event
- Smells like death itself
- Kind of gross
- Name has "phallus" in it
- And yet kind of cute
- Victorian men were loath to let women see one, fearing it made them seem inadequately large and stinky
Sadly as it turns out the stench, while powerful, is not long lived, and by the time I got to the garden on Friday afternoon, the flower was spectacular, but no longer stinky. Still it was a nice reason to get out of work.
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