Field Trip, August 9, 2006, #1 of 3: Amorphophallus titanum at Brooklyn Botanic Garden

[Updated 2006.08.10 20:15 EDT: Added link to today's article in the New York Times.]

We made it to BBG this evening, and I was not disappointed. To see all the photos, visit the flickr set I created for them.

A. titanum, detail of where the spadix emerges from the spathe. This picture best captures the subtle colors and sensuous textures of this magnificent plant.

The Cliff Notes version:

• The flower does not smell. Yet. The infamous stench erupts only while the female flowers are receptive, which may be only a few hours.
• BBG staff can't predict exactly when it will peak.
  
• It may peak as early as this Friday, or as late as Monday. You can visit their Titan arum webcam page to keep track of its progress.
• The fact that it's blooming at all is unexpected. They only learned barely two weeks ago that the current growth of the plant is a bloom and not a leaf.
• This evening's program included brief lectures by Dr. Alessandro Chiari, BBG’s plant propagator, and Mark Fisher, foreman of BBG’s Steinhardt Conservatory.
• There was not enough time for me to ask all the questions I had.
  

My first encounter with A. titanum, taken through the windows of the Bonsai House. Note the open windows. These open directly onto the patio where they serve food and drink from the Terrace Cafe. I wonder what will happen to appetites when the bloom peaks and reeks.
There were several local film crews there when we arrived, interviewing the BBG staff and a few visitors. I don't know why he's looking at me funny!

Stepping just inside the Bonsai House, we see the placement of "Baby" and film crew interviewing some of the visitors. The flat stones in the foreground and the empty benches around the perimeter normally house BBG's bonsai collection.

A view of (nearly) the entire bloom. The enveloping spathe is starting to pull away from the central spadix. Where the spathe overlaps itself can be considered the "front" of the flower. The sign to the right reads "CORPSE FLOWER, TITAN ARUM, Amorphophallus titanum, Sumatra, Indonesia".

A couple of detail shots of the spadix emerging from the spathe, shot from different places around the plant. The ribbing of the spathe will support it when it opens fully, like a huge burgundy velvet dress, at peak bloom. The whole thing has a rather muscular and animalistic feel to it. It reminded me of Audrey II from "Little Shop of Horrors" which I saw years ago at the Orpheum Theatre in the East Village.

Continue reading ...

Previous posts:

• August 9, 2006: What's in a name?
• August 7, 2006: Titan arum to bloom at BBG

Links:

• BBG's Titan Arum pages
• Wikipedia article
• My flickr set of photos from the visit
• New York Times, August 10: Brooklyn’s Bloom, a Sight (and Stench) Not to Be Missed (requires registration/subscription)

Tags: Amorphophallus, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, BBG, Titan arum, Corpse Flower

"The name's Phallus ... Amorpho-phallus ..."

"Baby" and guests in the Bonsai House at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on August 9, 2006.
Credit: Brooklyn Botanic Garden Titan Arum Webcam. Sampled approximately 11:40am EDT, 2006.08.09

Amorphophallus titanum, the Titan Arum, aka Corpse Flower, is within a week of peak bloom at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. You can see "Baby", as the plant is known at BBG, and its visitors, on BBG's Webcam. They've emptied the bonsai greenhouse and dedicated it entirely to this plant while it's blooming. Moving out all the bonsai is itself a big deal; some of the plants are hundreds of years old.

It's a big baby. As of last night at 8pm, it was 63.5" tall and 33.5" around. The BBG Growth Chart page says this latter figure is the "diameter", but from the pictures, that should be "circumference."

BBG has opened special members-only hours this evening for visiting the gardens and viewing the plant. If all goes according to plan, if you watch the webcam between the hours of about 6-7pm EDT this evening, you may catch a glance of your host himself and partner admiring "Baby". Check back late (EDT) tonight for my personal photos and descriptions of my first and possibly only ever close encounter with this flower.

Now, about the name. I have no problem with titanum: that's the "Titan" or "big" part. And it is a big flower. It's the largest unbranched inflorescence of any flowering plant in the world. Amorphophallus, on the other hand, translates to "phallus without form" ... rather an oxymoron, I would say. Put it all together and you get:

Giant

Shapeless

Penis.

Eeeewwwww!

Tags: Amorphophallus, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, BBG, Titan arum, Corpse Flower

News, August 7, 2006, Brooklyn Botanic Garden: Amorphophallus titanum, Titan Arum aka Corpse Flower, to bloom in NYC for first time since 1939

Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum) in bloom at the U.S. Botanic Garden Conservatory on November 20th, 2005. At the time this picture was taken, it measured 52.5" in height.
Credits: US Botanic Garden via Wikipedia Commons

Click the title to visit the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's web page for information about Amorphophallus titanum, read the blog, and view the web cam. Here's how they describe this probably once-in-a-lifetime event:

The titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum) is one of the world's most remarkable plants. Native to tropical forests in Sumatra, it produces a monstrous four- to seven-foot-tall flower head, which releases a monstrous stench of putrefaction at peak bloom (another name for the plant is the corpse flower!). The species rarely flowers in cultivation—the last time one bloomed in New York was 1939. However, Brooklyn Botanic Garden's ten-year-old specimen has recently begun to flower. It’s expected to reach full bloom at the end of the second week of August.

Don't miss this major botanical event! Visit our webpage for daily photo and plant-growth updates, as well as daily weblogs from members of BBG's horticultural staff. A webcam provides an updated image of the titan arum every 30 seconds. On this webpage, you'll also find links to articles on the natural history of the titan arum, the history of BBG's specimen, information about growing and conserving this threatened species, and more.

Links:

• BBG Titan Arum pages
• Wikipedia article
• Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden
  

Tags: Amorphophallus, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, BBG, Titan arum, Corpse Flower

Event, August 9, 2006, South Street Seaport, NYC: "Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion" Author Lecture and Book Signing

When: Wednesday, August 9, 2006, 7 pm

Where: South Street Seaport, Melville Gallery (213 Water Street between Fulton & Beekman).

Who: Alan Burdick presents Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion

Description: Now as never before, exotic animals and plants are crossing the globe, borne on the swelling tide of human traffic to places where nature never intended them to be. As alien species jump from place to place and increasingly crowd native and endangered species of existence, biologists speak fearfully of "the homogenization of the world." Never mind bulldozers and pesticides: the fastest-growing threat to biological diversity may be nature itself. Out of Eden is a dazzling, personal journey through this strange and shifting landscape. He follows world-class scientists - invasion biologists, "mix-o-ecologists" - and a global cast of alien species, to ask: What exactly is nature? What is natural? Book signing.

Info: Suggested donation $5. For more information call 212.748.8568.

Links:

• Via Science & the City
• South Street Seaport
• Alan Burdick

News, July 27, 2006: Male Mantids Say, "Love Me, Don't Eat Me!"

Favorite quote: "The act of sexual cannibalism in praying mantids is an example of extreme conflict between the sexes":

In a paper in the August issue of The American Naturalist, Jonathan Lelito and William Brown (SUNY-Fredonia), study male risk-taking behavior in a praying mantis by altering the risk of cannibalism and observing changes in male behavior. They find that the males are able to assess the risk of cannibalism and become more cautious in the presence of particularly hungry females.

"We know that hungry females are more likely to cannibalize and a head-on orientation makes it easier for her to attack the male with her predatory front legs," says Brown.

Lelito and Brown thus varied female hunger and physical orientation in order to assess how male mantids respond to variation in the risk of cannibalism. They found that males responded to greater risk by slowing their approach, increasing courtship behavior, and mounting from a greater – and possibly safer – distance.

"This shows that male mantids actively assess variation in risk and change their behavior to reduce the chance of being cannibalized," explains Brown. "Males are clearly not complicit, and the act of sexual cannibalism in praying mantids is an example of extreme conflict between the sexes."

Citation: Jonathan P. Lelito and William D. Brown, "Complicity or conflict over sexual cannibalism? Male risk taking in the praying mantis Tenodera aridifolia sinensis." The American Naturalist 167:263

I learned of this from SEED Magazine's "I Can't Believe It's Science" feature.

Links:

• American Society of Naturalists
• SUNY Fredonia
• SEED Magazine
  

Biodiversity News, August 2, 2006: NASA, Lasers, and Woodpeckers

1826 watercolor by John James Audubon

Lasers, dark mysterious wilderness, extinct species ... almost sounds like a sequel in a well-known series of movies in which dinosaurs eat people. But no, this is real science!

In June a research aircraft flew over delta regions of the lower Mississippi River to track possible areas of habitat suitable for the ivory-billed woodpecker [Campephilus principalis], one of the largest and most regal members of the woodpecker family. The project is supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and the University of Maryland used NASA’s Laser Vegetation Imaging Sensor (LVIS) onboard the aircraft. The instrument uses lasers that send pulses of energy to the Earth's surface. Photons of light from the lasers bounce off leaves, branches and the ground and reflect back to the instrument. By analyzing these returned signals, scientists receive a direct measurement of the height of the forest's leaf covered tree tops, the ground level below and everything in between.

...

LVIS project researcher Ralph Dubayah, a professor in the University of Maryland's Department of Geography [said]. “Lidar technology like LVIS measures the vertical structure of the trees and ground, setting it apart from other remote-sensing systems that provide detailed horizontal information that tells us little about whether a green patch of forest is short or tall, for example. When identifying habitats, the vertical structure of the vegetation is of paramount importance to many species, including a bird like the ivory-bill.”

Thematic map showing the survey area in the White River Wildlife Reserve.
Credit: NASA.

Satellite image of the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas. The White River, the focus of this summer's survey, is at the left of the image.
Credit: NASA image by Robert Simmon, based on Landsat 7 data provided by the Global Land Cover Facility.
Image acquired December 23, 2001 from NASA’s Landsat 7 satellite

Links:

• Wikipedia
• Cornell Ornithology Lab
• Nature Conservancy
• NASA Earth Observatory
  

I picked up this story through the Birding News Feed. It was variously reported by

• MongaBay: NASA helps search for "exinct" woodpecker
• NewsWise: Researchers Use Laser Sensor in Search for Ivory-Bill
• PhysOrg: NASA Assists Search for Woodpecker Thought to be Extinct
• AScribe: University of Maryland and NASA Researchers Use Laser Sensor to Map Possible Habitat for Ivory-Billed Woodpecker
  

Sidebar: Why I hate ads on the Web. The following were all ads displayed on the various story items:

• Woodpecker Control: Helpful links for woodpecker control.
• Woodpecker Deterrent: The Attack Spider scares them away. Sound-activated, fast. It works!
• Get Rid of Woodpeckers: Wide Variety Woodpecker Deterrents Affordable Woodpecker Repellents

This is why there are no Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers, people: You're scaring them all away!

On a more positive note, it seems that, after I've scared them all off, I could still buy one of my very own:

• Ivory Billed Woodpecker: Browse a huge selection now. Find exactly what you want today. [I just want one standard plumage male Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, please. Gift-wrapped.]

Meta: Categories in Sidebar

I've just reorganized the sidebar to this blog:
- Separated blog tools and links to their own section.
- Added ALL-CAPS headers to each section: EXPLORE (this blog), LINKS (resources) and NETWORK (Blog Rolls, back-links, and so on)
- Moved EXPLORE (this blog) to the top, just under the profile, followed by LINKS (resources).
- Added a del.icio.us tag "cloud" labelled Categories to the top of the EXPLORE section.
- Labelled the Technorati splot as "Search".

Please let me know what you think of the new tools and organization. In particular, let me know of any categories you would find useful. I've only just started tagging the entries, so it's going to take me a while to catch up. Trying to find an entry you read on this blog? What keywords would you search by? Those would make good categories for me to add to the "cloud".

Other Gardens: South Midwood Garden Tour, Sunday, July 30, 2006

[2006.08.03-11:40am EDT: See bottom of entry for link to article describing history of the Avenue H Station House.]

This post is rather lengthy. I'm hoping to make up for my numerous small and seemingly scattered, though all intricately interwoven in my mind, posts.

Google Map image of South Midwood area of Victorian Flatbush in Brooklyn. North is to the left in this image. The neighborhood is bounded by Foster Avenue (diagonal road) on the north (left), Brooklyn College (large ballfield) on the south (right), East 21st Street on the west, and Bedford Avenue on the east. South Midwood is one of about a dozen distinct neighborhoods of Victorian Flatbush.

On Sunday, July 30, I attended the South Midwood Garden Tour. I was invited by a fellow gardener from that neighborhood whose husband I had met at a "new neighbors" event last year, after we bought our house. We invited them to our house opening party last fall, and I got to sketch out the "garden in my mind" which was forming out of the weeds and dust which came with the house.

The Avenue H Subway Station, just a few blocks from the start of the tour at the community garden. This station was recently granted landmark status. At the turn of the last century, it was a real estate office for the new developments arising along the old Coney Island RR line, now the B/Q lines. It's the only wood-frame station house in the subway system, and the only one which was not originally built for a railroad purpose.

My journey began by taking the Q train from my local station a couple of stops south to Avenue H. The tour began at 11am at a community garden, the Campus Road Garden at Brooklyn College. This is located at the western end of the Brooklyn College campus, near the ball fields.

The light towers surrounding the playing fields have large nests of Monk Parakeets. Their calls were constant. Dragonflies were swarming over and around the gardens. Butterflies were everywhere.

Campus Road Garden, looking north.

Campus Road Garden, looking west back toward Avenue H.

The house of the first garden on the tour. The garden in the backyard was lovely, but I really liked the look of these vines embracing the turret.

The backyard garden of the same house. The gardener was not available for interrogation, but the tour guide told us that everything had been designed and built over several years by the owner.

Second garden on the tour. The cool shade and sound of the waterfall was a welcome relief from the oppressive heat that day. The owner is standing with her back to the camera. This garden was just built in June of this year.

The next four photos are all from the same house and gardens. It's on a double lot, 100ft x 100ft, a rarity in Brooklyn, but South Midwood has several of them. This garden was one of the highlights of the tour for me.





Skipping ahead a few gardens, these next two photos are different views of a well-designed and inviting accessible garden. The raised beds were customed designed and built for the gardener, whose mobility had become restricted over time. The integral seating is a terrific feature, providing both a place to sit and work the beds, and inviting visitors to get up close and personal with the plantings. This was another garden at the top of my list of favorites. I have so many ideas for my own gardens from this one.



Another backyard garden.


At this stop it was the house, and not the gardens, which was featured on the tour. But the gardens make their own statement, which I would not want you to do without.


A couple of flower portraits from two other gardens.



I have a special fondness for large, red Hibiscus. It takes me back to my childhood in space-age Florida. I picked flowers just like this from the monstrous, garage-sized shrubs outside our house to dissect, study, and learn all the parts of the flower. I even put together a presentation on flowers and pollination for my grade school classmates and school. Yes, I was a curious child, in all the meanings of the word.

At the penultimate stop, the gardener invites his guests to enjoy the sensual pleasures of his herb garden.


The last, but not least, stop on the tour, home of the tour guide. The food and refreshments were raved over. And the gardens were nothing to sneeze at, either.


Links:

• The Little Station in the Woods tells the whole story of the Avenue H Station House.

Event, September 9, 2006: 2nd Annual World Naked Gardening Day (WNGD)

[Viewer discretion is advised before following the link from the title of this blog entry.]

Okay, I could have held this for Friday, but it's hot, and two circuit breakers have tripped already this evening, requiring me to get dressed again, grab the flashlight and keys, and go down two or three stories to the basement to reset them, and I'm down to crashing in the last room in the house with air conditioning, so running around naked in the outdoors almost sounds attractive ... almost. If it weren't for the mosquitoes, and the heat stroke, and the ... well, ummm, other things.

Gardening has a timeless quality, and anyone can do it: young and old, singles or groups, the fit and infirm, urban and rural. An elderly lady in a Manhattan apartment can plant new annuals in her window box. Families can rake leaves in their back yard. Freehikers can pull invasive weeds along their favorite stretch of trail. More daring groups can make rapid clothes-free sorties into public parks to do community-friendly stealth cleanups.

Why garden naked? [My question, exactly. They need a FAQ page.] First of all, it's fun! Second only to swimming, gardening is at the top of the list of family-friendly activities people are most ready to consider doing nude. [Ummm, what's number three?] Moreover, our culture needs to move toward a healthy sense of both body acceptance and our relation to the natural environment. Gardening naked is not only a simple joy, it reminds us--even if only for those few sunkissed minutes--that we can be honest with who we are as humans and as part of this planet.

All that's involved is getting naked and making the world's gardens--whatever their size, public or private--healthier and more attractive. WNGD has no political agenda, nor is it owned or organized by any one particular group. Naked individuals and groups are encouraged to adopt the day for themselves.

Now, aside from all the naked bits (sorry) they also have some info and links regarding organic gardening, permaculture, and that sort of thing. Some helpful gardening tips (really sorry) for the naturists who find their way to their site.

So, this is not an endorsement, nor a recommendation. The neighbor's security searchlights will not find me cavorting in the backyard with the raccoons and opposa. But I know some of you out there have rather large tracts of land ... distant neighbors ...

Just think about it. That's all I ask.

Props to Improbable Research for bringing this to my attention.

News, August 1, 2006: NASA Earth Observatory Maps NYC's Heat Island, Block by Block

Timely enough, given the record temperatures we're experiencing this week. Tomorrow's forecast has been "upgraded" from what I reported yesterday: the THI may reach 117F tomorrow.

Temperatures in New York City as measured by Landsat on August 14, 2002, at 10:30am, during a heat wave. Cooler temperatures are blue, hotter are yellow.
Source: NASA Earth Observatory. Map by Robert Simmon, using data from the Landsat Program.


Temperatures in New York City as measured by Landsat on August 14, 2002, at 10:30am, during a heat wave. Cooler temperatures are blue, hotter are yellow.
Source: NASA Earth Observatory. Map by Robert Simmon, using data from the Landsat Program.


The ability of vegetation to moderate urban temperatures is graphically demonstrated in these paired images from NASA's Earth Observatory. The spatial resolution of these images is 60 meters per pixel. At that scale, I can just about make out the block where I garden:

Closeup of the vegetation map, centered on central Brooklyn. The green area at the left is Greenwood Cemetery. Prospect Park is the dark green area at the top; the white area within it is Prospect Lake.


Below the park, to the south, Victorian Flatbush, with its tree-lined streets, detached wood frame houses, and front lawns, spreads out as a series of olive green areas. The beige areas in-between the olive are rowhouses and apartment buildings. You can even make out a curving green line across the southern end of this area: That's the old LIRR right-of-way, long abandoned, and overgrown with trees.

NASA has just published a report on urban heat islands highlighting the research of Stuart Gaffin, an associate research scientist with the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City, and his colleagues:

In the summer of 2002, Gaffin and his colleagues used satellite temperature data, city-wide land cover maps, and weather data, along with a regional climate model to identify the best strategies for cooling the city. The team estimated how much cooling the city could achieve by planting trees, replacing dark surfaces with lighter ones, and installing vegetation-covered “green roofs.”
The team studied the city as a whole, as well as six “hotspot” areas—including parts of Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn—where air temperatures near the ground were higher than the city-wide average. Each area was serviced by Con Edison, the local power company, so the scientists could compare electricity use. Each area also had available space so that the mitigation strategies the team considered could be modeled in the study and potentially implemented later on.
August 14 fell on one of the hottest heat wave days in New York’s summer of 2002, making it a good day to take the city’s temperature. Measuring the temperature of every last sidewalk, street, parking lot, roof, garden, and grassy area in an entire city isn’t easily done from the ground, so the researchers relied on NASA to take the city’s temperature from the sky. NASA’s Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper collected thermal infrared satellite data. ...
- Beating the Heat in the World's Big Cities

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