Visitors to a California university garden now have the chance to
see a large, exotic plant showing off its once-in-a-century
blossoming, garden officials said.
The plant, a Puya raimondii also known as the Queen of
the Andes, is blooming at the University of California Botanical
Garden in Berkeley, California. The rare bloom usually happens only
once every 80-100 years in the wild, but the university's plant is
flowering just 24 years after it was planted.
This will mark the second Puya blooming at the Berkeley
gardens. The first, which occurred in the late 1980s, attracted
thousands of visitors, a garden spokeswoman said in a statement on
Tuesday.
At its base, the tall, green plant looks like the head
of a palm tree. At its center, a large cactus-like stalk shoots out
from the fronds and is about the size and shape of a surfboard.
The plant is pollinated by a variety of birds at the
gardens and is expected to grow up to 30 feet (9.1 meters) tall and
produce up to 30,000 flowers when it reaches full bloom, the
spokeswoman said.
The plant was grown from a seed brought to the botanical gardens in
1990 from Bolivia and is part of the largest species of bromeliad
plants in the world. Viewers can see the developing bloom from a
wooden viewing platform in the gardens.
Watch the beautiful plants
here;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaqBpfObfnk#t=21
