These otherworldly blossoms have no genus and species so I'll reach back to my plant taxonomy class and name them Chihuliensis fabulosa.
These were spotted at the Dale Chihuly exhibit in the New York Botanical Garden last fall.
For more realistic glass flowers, if you're in Cambridge MA, be sure to check out the glass flower collection, which receives a four pant-hoot rating on the Bushwellian scale of cool and unusual things to see in the Boston area, at the Harvard Museum of Natural History:
This unique collection of over 3,000 models was created by the glass artisans, Leopold Blaschka and his son, Rudolph. The commission began in 1886, continued for five decades, and represents more than 830 plant species.
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In honour of Linnaeus' 300th birthday, and to rescue him from the canard that he merely applied Aristotelian logic to biology, I offer up this essay on his view of classification and species. I do not think Linnaeus was an essentialist in the Mayrian sense - he nowhere specifies that species have…
Get yourself free PDFs of old biology/taxonomy books and papers courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library:
Ten major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries, and research institutions have joined to form the Biodiversity Heritage Library Project. The group is developing a strategy and…
tags: new species, biology, botany, orchid, tiniest orchid, Orchidaceae, Platystele, Lou Jost
A close-up of the world's smallest orchid, at just over 2mm from petal tip to petal tip.
Image: Lou Jost.
The world's smallest orchid was discovered recently in a mountainous nature reserve in Ecuador…
It's spring, and everything looks great in the garden right now. Well, except for those pervasive Star of Bethlehem invaders that have to be pulled out by the dozens. Star of Bethlehem is a non-native, very invasive plant that can take over your flower bed almost overnight. I spent about an hour…
...and, last week, it was blown up by the Boston bomb squad when a troglodyte noticed "A buncha fake flahrs whut mighta bin put'ere bah TUR'RISTS" and phoned the PD in a fit of single-neuron hysteria.
Ha! I hope you don't mind if I co-opt this handy little phrase for future use.
Yes, those glass flowers are evil, eeeeeeevil weapons of silicate botanical destruction, and their continued existence would only embolden the terrorists.
As a former resident of the Boston area (Cambridge), I could only shake my head and think, "Now why am I not surprised by this massive burst of overreactive clusterfuckery?" Good old Mumbles Menino. Too bad the Boston firefighters and cops were pulled away from more pressing tasks by Aqua Teen Hunger Force Lite Brites.
Co-opt away. It's not like I could prevent it from happening anyway. ;)
To be fair, I think we can see how the flowers (at least) could be regarded as threatening, since there's nothing more menacing than a clearly-organized group of pistil-packers.
I've often wondered where the line between due diligence and pure bat-shit insane panic lay. Now I know it's somewhere in Beantown.
That's funny. For the last five years, I thought that line was in the voting booth.
What is the flowers name