Finally had a chance to pull together a time lapse from the still camera I had running during the titan arum bloom-time at Cornell. We had more than 10.000 people visit (many standing in line for more than an hour) and close to half a million views on livestreams. It was a blast.
I missed a month of spring in the week or so I was working close to 24/7 on the titan arum blooming at work. But I did have a few minutes to shoot some pix as the early spring bloomers rushed by with the unseasonably warm weather.
Shows spathe opening on March 18, 2012. Audio description by graduate student Gwynne Lim is from March 19. Larger version at CornellCast. HD version coming next week.
The spadix collapsed on March 22, 2012. Don’t fret. Ph.D. candidate Gwynne Lim told me early that day that it was hollow and could go over anytime. “We went to the greenhouse early this afternoon and the appendix was ripping at the seams just above the male flowers,” says Lim. “It looks so sad.” View the 7-hour collapse in 30 seconds below or on YouTube.
I was way too busy to take many pictures of the titan arum bloom. But if you missed the event, there are plenty of places you can see why it was so exciting:
Craig is sequestered on campus waiting for the Titan Arum to bloom. It’s starting now and should be open tonight. Craig is making updates on the Cornell Titan Arum blog if you want to follow along.