Virginia Tech "Corpse Plant" To Bloom On August 4th

Radical Rad writes "Virginia Tech has a second Amorphophallus titanum, or 'corpse plant,' ready to bloom and emit its intensely powerful stench. The plant only blooms once every 4 to 20 years and lasts only 2-3 days. Its stench attracts carrion beetles and flesh flies to pollinate it. See this link for photos of the bloom." Instant road-trip excuse.

Comments

This weekend at UC Davis

[JabberWokky]

There's one named Tabitha blooming this weekend at UC Davis (in California). My SO and I have made a date to go take a look.

A rose is a rose is rose, but nothing says geek love like Amorphophallus titanum...

--
Evan "her lab is on campus; she's home today because they ran out of liquid helium for the EPR machine"

Photos on my Blog

[waldoj]

I visited this afternoon and wrote it up, along with a half dozen photos, on my blog. As of 3:30pm, it had only just started to bloom. I plan to return tomorrow, by which time it ought to be in its full...er...glory, and take some more photos. You know where to find them.

-Waldo Jaquith

Re:There are more in Miami - split infinitive :-(

[renehollan]

My take is that I'll tolerate split infinitives (and other faux-pas, like dangling participles) in spoken English, but I wince when I see them in written form (except when the intent is to demonstrate the character's use of language, of course).

Yes, I know the "English isn't Latin" debate around split infinitives, but I also know that English is about the most irregular language out there, and extremely difficult for non-native speakers to learn well (Hmm, should I have written "...to welly learn?"), because of this. So, when I see a novel construction that adds nothing to what is being communicated, I question it's value.

Often such constructions help make longer sentences shorter, but also more ambiguous or harder to parse -- we don't realize it because they become idiomatic. "That's not something I'll put up with" is, admitedly, less awkward than "That's something up with which I shall not put." Even better: "That's something I won't accept." Best: "That's unacceptable." But, is the syntactic relaxation of permitting dangling participles worth the potential ambiguous constructions that now become possible (not that I can think of any out of hand)?

I know language evolves, but I am more comfortable with the introduction of new nouns and verbs than I am with changes in structure.

Just don't bring up constructions like "intensive purposes", "reason being", and "quote... unqote". (These should be "intents and purposes", "the reason is", and "quote... endquote".) Yes, we speak that way, often to save time and get our point across faster before we are cut off ("before the cutting of our response is in the offing", perhaps?), but the written word persists longer than the relevance of the quill used to draw it across parchment. It deserves a somewhat better presentation than that accorded to dying vocalizations.