Historic Plant Event!

I got the following email from the Brooklyn Botanical Garden:

Dear Mr. Lyle,
Amorphophallus Titanium at
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
1000 Washington Avenue
Brooklyn, NY

Historic Plant Event
Come Visit!

This plant has only bloomed eight times in the USA. The only other time in NYC was around 1936. It's due to bloom at Brooklyn Botanic Garden (in the conservatory) sometime in next ten days (August 7-14 but not known exactly when).

Check out our home page for details, hours to visit, bloom status, photos, etc.

Brooklyn GreenBridge
Brooklyn Botanic Garden

I've never heard of an, "historic plant event" and I was excited to learn that there is such a thing. Images of late 19th Century gentleman-scientists of a "Jules Verne" sort spring to mind. Those Victorian era empiricists that went out into the natural world to bravely catalogue and record every creeping, crawling, fucking thing out there. These were the sort of people who could shoe a horse, built a boat, create a vaccine, design a rocket, speak Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and swim the English Channel. And that was on a bad day. They called these fellows, "Renaissance men." Think Indiana Jones with a smoking jacket and a parlour.

For some strange reason, that's what I thought of when I read about Amorphophallus Titanium. Botanical gardens and conservatories make me want to be the kind of person who, in a very civilized way, cultivates fungi and orchids in his spare time. Instead, I'm busy looking at Internet shennanigans or watching, "Key Largo" for the 20th time on TCM.

Naturally, I went to the web site for the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. I like plants. And is there anything more interesting than watching a plant via a webcam? They argue that it's better than actually being there, because this thing fills the air with the smell of shit and rotten meat when it blooms. But that makes me really want to be there. A room full of people watching a plant fart. Not to be sarcastic, I'm into seeing this thing open up. Maybe it needs to feed every ninth time it blooms. People may think that they've seen it all these days, but there hasn't been a man-eating plant around since...well, it's been awhile. Roger Corman made a movie about the phenomenon years ago. Or maybe it will open and deliver an incredibly eloquent oration about the need to avoid foreign entanglements. Jimmy Hoffa could roll out. I doubt it. Most likely, it will be no more aesthetically appealing than a dandelion. What makes it interesting is that it happens so rarely. Sort of like when I exercise. That's only happened 8 times on American soil, too.

Anyway, I have to go. Someone just sent me a .jpg of a chimp picking his nose. But knowing me, I'll check into the webcam every 20 minutes when I'm on the Internet. You should, too. You don't have anything better to do. This is a farting plant for Christ's sake! If only the Brooklyn Botanic Garden had billed it like that, they would have had a lot more interest. Get that all important 18-35 demographic.