GENEVA — Thousands of plant lovers have flocked to the northern Swiss city of Basel to see a giant, stinky flower bloom for the first time.
The Basel Botanical Gardens expects 10,000 people to see its amorphophallus titanum, or corpse flower, in full glory before the bloom wilts late Saturday or Sunday. The plant is 17 years old and has never bloomed before.
Visitors haven't been deterred by the strong stench of rotting flesh the flower emits to attract insects for pollination.
The 6.6-feet (2-meter) tall flower is native to the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the last one to bloom in Switzerland was 75 years ago.
Worldwide, there have been only 134 recorded blooms from artificial cultivation. ~~ From the Associated Press
Webcam site~~ http://titanwurz.unibas.ch/webcam.php
This is truly an amazing thing to see and coming on the heels of Triplet Angus Cows being born in Montana; I feel like I am doing the Morning Farm Reports From Devils Lake, North Dakota.
I was in Devils Lake, North Dakota, as a child, and what I remember the most about my time in that area were the Sunflowers. Thousands upon thousands of sunflowers baking in the hot sun. But re fun thing about them was that you could sit and watch their heads turn as the sun went through the day. They all faced east for the sunrise and were facing west for the sunset. Kind of like they knew where all the good stuff was coming from and where it was headed. Oh, and yes I was a very easily amused child, lol.
It is truly an amazing site and one I will always cherish as a memory of one of the good times in my life and of a family I loved.
It is funny how the human mind works. It gets stimulated by the site of a very large flower bursting at its seams in an attempt to bloom and that site brings memories rushing back to you. Memory's that make me smile are always welcome and sunflowers always do that for me. On Sunday mornings my father would drive us out of Grand Forks, North Dakota, where he had a military posting, and onto the surrounding small roads that meandered between large fields of sunflowers and wheat. He always had a picnic lunch packed and we would eat by a little stream or pond. Every outing was not only a chance for me to spend time with this man I adored but he made sure that it was also time spent learning something that would shape my life.
He gave me a little red purse, with yellow sunflowers embroidered into its sides, and he tole me that it was a place to keep all the things he tried to teach me so that I could find what I needed fast. Every time he was deployed to some far off place, and i went to live with my grandmother in Brooklyn, New York. he would leave me a note in that little purse. I still have that purse and every note he ever left me.
I pulled it out this morning and reread many of those notes. At first they always bring me tears because I miss him so much but then he always makes me smile with his little jokes. It is like he knew that some days, you know the ones when you are alone and your mind wanders to a lot of places you would rather not go, a smile would pull me back to a good place. In truth, reading these little notes, works to keep me on a good path.
Today was another slow news day but one story about a giant, stinky flower trying to bloom turned a slow news day into a morning of good memories and a lot of smiles.
Love ya,
Night
PS....Tomorrow Chapter 18 of Nights Dance To Day.
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