Photo Essay: The Blooming, Stinking Corpse Flower (and Other Delights) at Huntington Gardens

I feel like the entire time in New York, all the public crazes had to do with some concert or bar or club or party or maybe art opening or burger stand.

Maybe I'm just in a different place in my life, but since moving to California, I've been getting excited instead over giant boulders and rubber duckies and weird light and color experiences, not to mention the space shuttle and strange blooming plants. (I look forward to the upcoming Downtown water slide as well.)

Years ago, I once stood in line for hours in the rain for concert tickets to see Billy Idol at The Bottom Line in Greenwich Village. Now I get up early to drive to the San Gabriel Valley to get a whiff of a rotten-smelling flower that only blooms (and stinks) for a few hours.



I had enough foresight to arrive to Huntington Gardens early this morning – before their advertised public open hours – so, without having to wait in line, I got to see the staff stick a camera down into the "Corpse Flower" bloom to witness the tiny, hidden female parts (the stigma)...



...which they were about to manually pollinate by cutting a rectangular window in the side of the bottom of the plant.



I also got there just in time (before the line really started to form), since the Amorphophallus titanium had already reached its peak bloom sometime around midnight...



...and was already starting to close up again.



It's called the "Corpse Flower" because of its alleged "rotting" smell...



...which certainly is pungent and nauseating, but somewhat indescribable. It didn't smell like any carcass I've ever encountered, lacking the meaty, fatty, gamey quality of an animal.



It is not particularly beautiful, and certainly not fragrant, but it is imposing and tremendous, and demands respect.



I was happy to have an excuse to return to the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanic Gardens...


Erepsia heteropetala (South Africa)

...which has enough American and European paintings, sculpture, and furniture in their art galleries...


Mammillaria geminispina (Mexico)

...as well as manuscripts, prints, and photographs in its library collection...


Echinocereus viereckii (Mexico)

...to keep you busy all day.



During my first (and only other) visit four years ago, I found the whole thing too overwhelming...



...and, instead of trying to do it all, focused on exploring the Huntington's fabulous botanic garden...



...particularly their desert garden.



I hadn't posted most of my photos from back then...



...but today's visit reminded me of its beauty...



...and intriguing microcosm of biodiversity.






Aeonium tabuliforme




Aeonium arboreum


Aeonium arboreum



The butterflies were still fluttering on this late summer afternoon, today...




...as they probably do all year, as there is always something blooming in the gardens of Southern California, all year long, under the unrelenting sun.

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I've been so overwhelmed by the expanse of The Huntington Library and Gardens (on the site of the former San Marino Ranch) in the two times I've visited previously, so I welcomed the invitation to go with someone who knew the place well. I knew there would be plenty of new territory for me to explore, and I would get to see one of her favorite places through her eyes.

Besides, I wanted to see the fruit that the corpse flower had borne.



Turns out, despite my friend's familiarity with the place, she'd never seen the corpse flower, nor had she even been in the Conservatory building which houses it.



So together we could explore exotic orchids that look like insects...



...carnivorous plants (like the pitcher plant)...



...that swallow up bugs that are trying to get a drink of water...



...in variety of climates – from clouds to bog – that foster growth of plants that thrive in a humid environment not usually found in LA.



Lucky for us, it is magnolia season...



...at least for the early bloomers...



...and we could find plenty of fragrant blossoms that hadn't lost all their petals yet.



We also got to catch the camellias before all their blossoms had dropped or were shaken off during their peak.



This third visit to The Huntington was totally different than the prior two, finally making my way to the Chinese garden...



...and the Japanese garden...



...and then circling back to my favorite: the desert garden.



Even this repeat visit to the desert garden was different. I didn't have to find my own way. I had someone I could engage in mindless chatter, our admiration for the jade and the yucca and the aloe so totally mutual – both loving living things that other people recoil from.

And maybe she got to see a familiar place in a new way, through my eyes.

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Photo Essay: Previously Undiscovered Treasures at The Huntington, Upon Its Centennial

Adapted from my article for KCET's Artbound,

"Ten Ways to Explore 100 Years of The Huntington," 

which you can read in full here. 

Located in the City of San Marino (formerly the "San Marino Ranch"), most Angelenos know it as simply as “The Huntington."

I'd been there a few times before, and I'd even written about it—but I'd focused primarily on its plants (not the least of which is the corpse flower), even though the highlights of this historic property are at once horticultural, artistic, and literary.

What began as a working ranch—with orange groves and avocado trees—blossomed into a sprawling estate, the home of railroad magnate (and Pacific Electric Railway creator) Henry E. Huntington and his second wife (not to mention his aunt by marriage) Arabella.

And since it started celebrating its centennial in September 2019, it seemed like a good time to revisit The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens and see what I'd missed on my prior visits.



The Huntingtons were avid art collectors—and their 55,000-square-foot Beaux-Arts-style villa, where they lived luxuriously in the Gilded Age, first opened as a British art gallery in 1928 (a year after Mr. Huntington’s death) and now houses the European art gallery.



Primarily designed in 1909 by Myron Hunt (of the Ambassador Hotel and Rose Bowl), the exterior evokes at once a late 19th-century Italian or Spanish Renaissance country house and a French palace.



It’s perhaps most renowned as the home of “Pinkie” by Thomas Lawrence (acquired 1927) and “The Blue Boy” by Thomas Gainsborough (acquired 1921, currently off display during conservation efforts). I preferred gazing at the David Healey Memorial Window (circa 1898) from the Unitarian Chapel, Heywood, Lancashire (now demolished).



It's a two-story tall, 18-foot high series of leaded art glass panels that depict Truth, Faith, Love, Courage, Generosity, Charity, Justice, Mercy and Humility.



Designed in a mosaic style by Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, it was fabricated by William Morris's renowned firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co.



The Huntingtons—in particular, Henry—were also big readers. And although there was a library within the Huntington mansion, the exponentially growing book collection soon outgrew it, necessitating the construction of a separate library building.



Now, one of the world's most renowned independent research facilities of its kind, The Huntington Library has collected more than 11 million manuscripts and other items dating back to the 11th century—from Shakespeare to Thoreau and even Benjamin Franklin and Jack London.



And over time, entire holdings—from such libraries as the William Bixby Library, Bridgewater House Library, Elihu Dwight Church Library and the Ninth Duke of Devonshire’s collection—have been acquired and added.



An entire wing of the library building is occupied by the Dibner Hall of the History of Science.



First opened in 2008 — and largely based on the Burndy Library collection of historian Bern Dibner — the hall covers astronomy, medicine, electricity, light, engineering, Darwinian evolution and other scientific disciplines of the Western Hemisphere.



One of its most unique collections is of nearly 400 light bulbs, some hand-blown...



...originally amassed by Dr. Samuel Hibben of the Westinghouse Electric Company in the 1920s.



About half of them are on display, ranging from the 1890s to the 1960s.



Other intriguing objects include antique telescopes...



...anatomical models...



...early X-ray images, sundials, a camera obscura...

...an interactive display of Kircher’s mirror trick...



...and a replica of a microscope pioneered by 17th-century optician and microscope maker John Marshall.



These collections help make The Huntington one of the world’s most important destinations for students of the history of science.



I'd previously spent plenty of time in The Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science...



...but this time, outside its entrance that faces the Children’s Garden, I discovered something new...



...the Hummingbird Gazebo...



....which attracts a flurry of activity from Anna's hummingbirds, Allen’s hummingbirds, and more.

My final stop on my centennial visit was a spot that Mr. Huntington himself loved so much, he was buried there.

Overlooking the gardens from a knoll above the orange groves, both Henry and Arabella Huntington are interred in a Greek-style temple, with a circular peristyle and dome constructed of limestone marble from Colorado’s Yule Creek Valley.

Completed in 1929, the mausoleum was designed by architect John Russell Pope, who went on to employ a similar approach to the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.

In the inner colonnade, mounted onto the masonry of freestanding pillars, are marble bas-relief panels (painstakingly cleaned in a 2012 restoration) by sculptor John Gregory, representing how each of the four seasons relates to the four stages of life.

By creating this publicly accessible cultural resource, the Huntingtons ensured that their legacy would live on—not only in terms of their land and their holdings, but in the continuing pursuit of the world's plants, paintings, and printed matter.

To read more at KCET.org, click here. 

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Photo Essay: The Blooming, Stinking Corpse Flower (and Other Delights) at Huntington Gardens
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