The Corpse Flower is Blooming @ The Phipps- Promising a Sick & Amazing Experience

Yes, this is an absolutely huge flower that smells like a rotting corpse and is pollinated by carcass eating insects. People travel thousands of miles and hike for hours to see this in its native Sumatra.

From the Wikipedia

"The titan arum's inflorescence can reach over 3 metres (10 ft) in height. Like the related cuckoo pint and calla lily, it consists of a fragrant spadix of flowers wrapped by aspathe, which looks like a large petal. In the case of the titan arum, the spathe is green on the outside and dark burgundy red on the inside, and deeply furrowed. The spadix is hollow and resembles a large loaf of French bread. Down inside the sheath of the spathe the spadix bears two rings of small flowers. The upper ring bears the male flowers, the lower ring is spangled with bright red-orange carpels. The "fragrance" of the titan arum resembles rotting meat, attracting carrion-eating beetles and flesh flies (family Sarcophagidae) that pollinate it. The inflorescence's deep red color and texture contribute to the illusion that the spathe is a piece of meat. During bloom, the tip of the spadix is approximately human body temperature, which helps the perfume volatilize; this heat is also believed to assist in the illusion that attracts carcass-eating insects."

Apparently cultivating it is pretty hard and has only been managed by a few hundred botanic gardens.

The Corpse Flower segment on Essential Pittsburgh

The Phipps

Open until 2 a.m. nightly Aug. 20 and 21

Pittsburgh Rated Number One Mid Sized Art City

Last year readers of American Style Magazine, ranked Pittsburgh the number three mid sized arts destinations and this year, perhaps due to a little ballot stuffing- we are number one. "Excitement around the city is driven largely by glass-related events, such as the Dale Chihuly exhibition starting next month at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, the Glass Art Society international conference in June and related events, according to publisher Wendy Rosen. Pittsburgh also scored points among readers for The Andy Warhol Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art and smaller private art galleries."

Well, anyway you slice it, it's hard to argue that readers made a bad choice. The benefit's of cross promoting and branding shows around the glass conference is really likely to pay off. Of course it might pay off better if we had a gallery guide or a bunch of people contributed to an art blog that covered the city or if we had a great online art portal that was attatched to the visit Pittsburgh website.