HERB - Fw: Maybe the Herb list needs to see this

[Christine A Seelye-King]

A news tidbit from my lord to the Herb List. 
	Christianna
--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Fox, Dallas" <FoxD at sti.imshealth.com>
To: "'mermayde at juno.com'" <mermayde at juno.com>
Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1999 15:30:06 -0400 
Subject: Maybe the Herb list needs to see this
Message-ID:
<C26E7066AAA6D211AB16006097A52FCC7503F4 at stiusatlcx1.salestech.com>

>From Yahoo, Oddly Enough News,
Tuesday August 3 9:29 AM ET 
Rare Flower Opens In California With Big Stink
By Michael Miller 
SAN MARINO, Calif. (Reuters) - Thousands of people, holding their noses
to
ward off a putrid odor, flocked to witness a rare botanical event -- the
blooming of a tropical plant called a corpse flower. 
Known in its native Sumatra, Indonesia, as Bunga Bangkai, or corpse
flower,
the specimen at the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens is only the
11th to bloom in the United States since being introduced to the country
in
1937, and the first ever in California. 
The ``big stink,'' as it is affectionately known to the botanists at the
Huntington, started to open up Sunday night -- an event that had been
widely
heralded by local media for weeks. 
However the flower, whose botanical name is Amorphophallus Titan Arum,
has a
very short bloom time and it is expected to start closing up Wednesday.
As
it approached its bloom, the plant grew 4 inches a day. 
With a phallus-like pod, or spadix, standing about 6 feet, tall, and a
crimson petal, or spathe, 2 feet wide, it attracted thousands of people
to
the gardens Monday. But while all agreed it gave off a putrid odor, few
could agree on what kind of smell it was. 
``I think it's a case of all smells to all people,'' said Kathy Musial,
curator of the plant collection, as visitors, some wearing masks or
clothes-pins to cover their noses, milled around the huge plant. 
Some visitors said it smelled like a dead rat or some other kind of
animal,
others opted for dirty socks or rotting vegetables, while one woman said
it
reminded her of her son's sneakers. 
Musial opted for dirty socks, noting she had passed a dead skunk on the
road
as she drove to work Monday morning, ``and this plant doesn't smell half
as
bad as that.'' 
The corpse flower plant was sent to the Huntington gardens in March by
Mark
Dimitt of the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, who had started growing it
from
a seed in 1993. 
The plant's native habitat is in the tropical rain forests of Sumatra.
The
first record of it blooming outside Sumatra was at the Royal Botanic
Gardens
in Kew, England, in 1889. 
The first time it bloomed in the United States was at the New York
Botanic
Gardens in 1937, where it caused a sensation. 
It was immediately named the official flower of The Bronx -- not because
of
its smell but because its rapid growth rate reminded officials of the
fast
growing New York borough where the Botantic Gardens are located. 
Although known as the world's largest flower, the corpse flower is in
fact
thousands of tiny flowers. Its repulsive scent, which is stronger at
night
than during the day, is intended to attract pollinators, which in Sumatra
are thought to be carrion beetles and sweat bees. 
As for that smell. It reminded this reporter of rotting cabbages with
just a
slight hint of city garbage and a nuance of eau de sweaty feet. 


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