I think I have already stated how I am obsessed with the corpse flower at Washington, DC’s US Botanical Garden. It should be obvious as I have photographed it everyday for the past thirteen days (July 11, July 12, July 13, July 14, July 15, July 16, July 17, July 18, July 19, July 20, July 21, July 22, and July 23). Today I realized I really am a bit too attached to it. The crowds visiting it have mostly died down, but some are still coming to see it. Some state they did not realize how quickly the bloom withered or didn’t realize they had missed the peak bloom. Today while I was photographing it, a group of teenagers were also there. They probably looked at it for only a few minutes. I saw one girl stand there, shrug her shoulders, then walk away with this “what’s the big deal” expression. I found myself thinking “don’t speak ill of the dying” as if the corpse flower might have its feelings hurt. Yes, I have grown far too attached to it. Then again, I am not the only person who anthropomorphizes it. While I was there, I heard someone tell some other people that the corpse flower was “moving on” as if it had found a better job at another botanical garden. This has caused me to get a mental image of the corpse flower dying back into its corm, then somehow extending wheels on its pot and wheeling itself over to a fancier botanical garden. This would somehow seems to be difficult without with arms or hands, but perhaps it is a really fancy pot that it can operate via low grade electrical charges in the soil. The large pot then takes to the road hauling the 80-lb or so corm to the fancier botanical garden with a better staff of botanists to care for it. DC traffic is bad enough without having to deal with a large pot containing a corpse flower corm slowing driving itself to a new greenhouse. Yes, I’ll stop with this nonsense now.
The blossom continues to wither. The spathe has collapsed completely back towards the spadix, and the spadix appears to be shrinking more. The plant is more yellow and the spathe looks crispy and dehydrated. I think the spadix is starting to lean also. As always, see the “Corpse Flower” page on my website that has photos from everyday that shows the whole plant so the photos can be more easily compared as well as a video that has a slide show of photos. Finally, I continue to give the smell report for old time’s sake. There is no smell.
