Chilean Volcanic eruption,The Corpse Flower and Quote of the week- Frank Lloyd Wright on trees,

The Corpse flower, Amorphophallus titanum, copyright-free image (for source and details, click [here])

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful

For the past few weeks, I have been buried in mountains of floral photographs, as I sort, arrange and edit the images for two new books. The first book is “Spring Flowers and Summer Rain” and has a lot of arty botanical photography in it with a selection of vaguely philosophical quotes by various great, good (or just-famous) people. The second- “Natural Wonder” is also a photo-rich, coffee-table style book, but has more of a popular science angle to it and features a lot of animal pictures, too. There will be more details of both books on here when the publication contracts have been sorted out, but that may be a while yet. One of the harder parts of both books has been getting the captions correct. As a zoologist, I tend to forget just how fluid “species” are in the plant kingdom and how many of the common plants around us are obscure hybrids and morphs of various better known (but often visually very different- at a first glance, at least) species.

So, given this week’s botanical focus, it seems appropriate for quote-of-the week, on Weirdbeautiful to be about plants -

"The best friend on Earth of Man is the tree. When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources on the Earth"
- Frank LLoyd Wright, American Architect, 1867- 1959.

The first of this week's links is to a stunning picture roaring lions (courtesy of stumbleupon.com)-
http://tinyurl.com/444q9fw

This week's second link is to a news item (video) about the Corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum)- one of a few famously foul smelling blooms in the world. This particular flower (in the video) is in the Botany Department of the University of Washington in Seatle. The flower, which is native to Sumatra, Indonesia, supposedly smells of rotting flesh- a scent that is attractive to the flies which pollinate it in the wild. The video is online here- -
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/43341732#43341732
and you can find out more about Amorphophallus titanum,[here]


Image= "Puyehue Lake and Volcano seen from the main East-West road (road 215), 8 km east of Entre Lagos township" by Clem23 (for picture creative commons license details, click [here])

Finally, one story that has been much in the news is the Eruption on the 4th June of the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle volcano complex (pictured above, before the latest eruption) in Puyehue National Park, Chile. Some of the most striking images of the eruption are online here-

http://www.emol.com/especiales/2011/fotoshd/erupcion-volcan/


The British tabloid newspaper The Daily Mail ran the same story under the characteristically hysterical title "Hell on Earth: Monster Volcano can be seen from SPACE as it spits fire into the sky", however their article does have some really stunning images of the eruption, taken by the orbiting Aqua satellite -
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2000166/Chile-volcano-seen-SPACE-spits-sky.html

You can find more details about the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Volcanic Complex (PCCVC) [here]and about the June 4th 2011 eruption, [here].

(Many thanks to Iva Lee for the tip off about the Corpse flower news video and to Patricia P. for the link to the emol.com volcanic eruption pictures).