I spent the best part of the day at Kew yesterday as their titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum, which means "giant misshapen penis" - I'm not just being rude!) was flowering. Emma went on Saturday, so saw it fully open (and sideways...), but you'll be pleased to know it was still doing its thing, and smelling like stale fish (and a boy from my class in primary school...) when I sprinted into the PoW from the main gate.
Now, a friend told me that when the titan arum opened at the Botanical Gardens in Cambridge a few years ago, they kept the glasshouse open overnight just to deal with the queues of people wanting to see it.
How lonely is that? And that wasn't just a fluke photo - that was what it was like most of the time. I really hope that it was more popular on Saturday. That and a conversation I overheard, where two parents were visiting Kew (and paying full entry price - they weren't members or season ticket holders) purely to take their kids to the adventure playground thing, made me feel sad for the people who work so hard to look after the plants and to educate people about life on Earth. Ultimately we all pay our entrance fee and we can either make the most of it, learn about the plants we share the planet with and come away richer for it, or we can sod off to the café and dump the kids in an adventure playground indoors on a lovely day. But what good is paying that money if you don't appreciate the work of Kew?
I wanted to jump up and down and squeal at these people: "Don't you realise? This is one of the largest inflorescences in the world? It makes this one flower, then it makes one big leaf, and then it repeats! And it smells, see? It absolutely honks of rotten fish and you're just not getting how awesome it is!"
But by that time I'd already yelled at a stupid foreign woman who was trying to flick a water dragon's tail with her visitors' map, so I thought maybe I wouldn't be welcome in the PoW if I carried on talking at other visitors and slunk off to the Temperate House.
Now, a friend told me that when the titan arum opened at the Botanical Gardens in Cambridge a few years ago, they kept the glasshouse open overnight just to deal with the queues of people wanting to see it.
How lonely is that? And that wasn't just a fluke photo - that was what it was like most of the time. I really hope that it was more popular on Saturday. That and a conversation I overheard, where two parents were visiting Kew (and paying full entry price - they weren't members or season ticket holders) purely to take their kids to the adventure playground thing, made me feel sad for the people who work so hard to look after the plants and to educate people about life on Earth. Ultimately we all pay our entrance fee and we can either make the most of it, learn about the plants we share the planet with and come away richer for it, or we can sod off to the café and dump the kids in an adventure playground indoors on a lovely day. But what good is paying that money if you don't appreciate the work of Kew?
I wanted to jump up and down and squeal at these people: "Don't you realise? This is one of the largest inflorescences in the world? It makes this one flower, then it makes one big leaf, and then it repeats! And it smells, see? It absolutely honks of rotten fish and you're just not getting how awesome it is!"
But by that time I'd already yelled at a stupid foreign woman who was trying to flick a water dragon's tail with her visitors' map, so I thought maybe I wouldn't be welcome in the PoW if I carried on talking at other visitors and slunk off to the Temperate House.
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