Long lines are a vanishing experience in the digital age where you wait on-line instead. What do people physically line up for any more? Tickets to see a Taylor Swift concert (or buy her merch). Disney World rides. Black Friday sales. The latest I-phone or PlayStation. This weekend, thousands queued up in Golden Gate Park for, of all things, a flower.
Okay, not just any flower. The Amorphophallus titanum, or titan arum, aka, Scarlet the Corpse Flower, a massive plant that blooms every three to five years for 48 hours and smells like a cross between old cabbage, rotting meat and death. The plant grows only in the rainforests of western Sumatra. Because of deforestation, fewer than 1,000 remain in the wild. It’s classified as endangered.
The Conservatory of Flowers has been sending out Instagram alerts on Scarlet’s progress for the past few weeks as its giant bud slowly prepared for release. Over the weekend, I began regularly checking a 24-hour live feed of the plant the Conservatory posted on YouTube. I know that sounds about as interesting as watching paint dry, but as a fellow Scarlet-watcher said, “it was oddly mesmerizing.”
At 3:43pm Monday afternoon, the Conservatory staff took to Twitter: “IT’S HAPPENING.” The bud was slowly unfurling wrinkled burgundy petals the size of a toddler. Crowds descended on the Conservatory. A steady stream of visitors flowed through until it closed at 9:30 that night. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get there until yesterday, the Fourth of July.
By the time I arrived, well before opening time, there were already hundreds of people in line, some wise enough to bring chairs and blankets to stay comfy in the morning fog. The line wound up the hill behind the conservatory and snaked down East Conservatory Drive, almost all the way back to JFK Promenade.
“What are you all waiting for?” a passing cyclist called out.
“There’s a flower that blooms every three to five years so we’re waiting to see it,” a guy in front of me answered. Then he turned to his companion and said “It sounds stupid to me now that I say it.”
But it wasn’t stupid.
We’re drawn by the rare, the ephemeral, the amazing. Wonder has been a pull of the park since its earliest days. In August, 1879, the Chronicle reported, nearly 2,000 people made their way to the Conservatory over two nights to “pay their tribute of admiration to the Victoria Regia, the wonderful colossal lily which blooms at night only” and exhales a “delicious pineapple odor.”
We long to be awed. The capacity to feel awe, the need for awe, is deeply wired in our brains. It’s fundamental to mammalian evolution, Dacher Keltner argues in “Awe, The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life”. “In awe,” he writes, “we encounter the vast mysteries of life.” Awe, he says, is a universal emotion, triggered by certain sublime experiences – including art, moral beauty, music, stories of life and death, and of course, encounters with nature, be that the monumental cliffs of the Sierras or a hummingbird in the backyard. We feel awe in our bodies and express it in a language of chills, goosebumps, tears, oohs, whoas and wows.
I think that desire to be awe-struck fed the long lines at the Conservatory. (Though that promise was maybe lost on the teenage boy standing behind me with his family. He wasn’t thrilled about waiting so long to see something whose chief virtue was its rarity. “There are like limited Kit-Kats but we don’t get those,” he complained good-naturedly.)
After two hours, I finally reached Scarlet, huge, stately, and not nearly as stinky as I’d expected-slash-hoped. The flower had peaked the day before, its odor mostly dissipated. Titan arum is an astonishingly weird plant. It starts life as a tuber, then comes out of the ground as a single bud without any petals. Its one leaf rises nearby, a smooth tall stem that looks like a tree topped with spray of leaflets. When it starts to bloom, a collar of big beef-red grooved petals slowly unfurl and roll downward exposing an inner column called the spadix. Tiny male and female flowers lie hidden at its base. At the same time, it releases the infamous stench that draws sweat bees and other pollinators that like to feed and breed on flesh. Like the sweat bees we’re lured by this spectacular trick of nature.
The intricacy of its life cycle is, yes, awesome, but I have to confess I was just as enthralled by many of the other things I passed on my way to see it: the fanged pitcher plants; the teensy trembling orchids; a plant that bloomed in day-glow colors (I didn’t catch its name); mammoth lily pads like the ones that wowed people nearly 150 years ago. The Conservatory staff were smart to direct the line through every room of the humid hothouse. Over and over I heard the sounds of awe.
Of course, everyone had their cell phones at the ready, raising them high or aiming them low to snap a photo. The line slowed when we got to Scarlet, as everyone stopped for selfies or just pictures of the plant on its own. I sometimes get judgmental about the way people — me included — always have to insert a camera between themselves and the experience they’re having. But maybe, I began to think, awe is still at work, driving us to capture those moments.
Biking home, I passed the Rose Garden and decided to stop and take a look. The Garden is past its prime now; many of the blooms are a little bedraggled but still beautiful. A woman was trying to take a selfie next to some big blousy pink roses. I offered to do the photo for her. We spoke a bit. Natasha told me she loved the Rose Garden. Whenever she goes to the DeYoung she always parks by the roses so she can see them on her way.
I asked her which was her favorite rose. She cast her eyes lovingly along the rows of bushes, considering, then pointed to a set of yellow-orange ones. The scent is just heavenly, she said, adding, “I love roses. And I’m very thankful to the people who work here who make our lives prettier and more beautiful.”
Maybe because roses are not my favorite flower, I asked her what she loves so much about them.
“You know probably memory, “ she said. “My grandmother and grandfather had a house in Kiev and when I was a girl I was staying there all summer. I remember the first thing in the morning, my grandmother was opening the window, I smelled the roses. That’s probably the best feeling of my childhood -- when you’re loved, unconditionally loved. “ She paused, then continued, “And the home, which doesn’t exist anymore.”
That’s when my heart lurched.
We said goodbye and I went to smell the rose she’d pointed out. It had a complex honeyed and citrusy scent that was, as promised, just amazing.
Wow! I can't imagine what it would be like to see that awe inspiring plant in person. I guess I'll have to wait 3 to 5 years. Thanks for your amazing pics.
Wonderful!