By Teri Bachman

BLOOM WITH A PEE-EEW

The campus waited with bated breath this summer for the blooming of the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory’s rare Amorphophallus titanum—or, as it’s more commonly known, corpse flower. That’s corpse as in “smells like.” Once open, the flower didn’t disappoint.

Native to the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, corpse flowers can take up to 15 years to produce a flower and rarely bloom in cultivation. The UC Davis plant had been grown from a seed and carefully tended for eight years.

Corpse flowers give off the scent of rotting meat in order to attract flies and other pollinating insects. This one also attracted a crowd of human visitors. In addition to several researchers who studied such things as the plant’s water loss and heat generation, more than a thousand visitors stopped by, climbing a ladder to get a better whiff of the signature scent of the 5-foot plant.

The smell? Some described it as rotten eggs or road kill or a Dumpster. Commented one male student, “It smells like my dorm room.”

NO TRIVIAL MATTER

Question: How do you know when your work’s really had an impact?

Answer: You share billing with Stevie Nicks and Harry Potter.

That’s our very own Eduardo Blumwald, professor of pomology, whose name appears in the fifth question on this card from the latest edition of Trivial Pursuit. The question: What did biologist Eduardo Blumwald develop a salt-tolerant strain of, in 2001—tomatoes, peppers or slugs? The answer: tomatoes.

OUT OF THE SADDLE

Could Davis’ claim as The Bike Capital of the World be in jeopardy? Not yet, says UC Davis Bicycle Program Coordinator David Takemoto-Weerts, but ridership has declined a bit. U.S. census data from 1990 show that 23 percent of Davis residents made daily trips on bikes, compared with 17 percent in 2000.

What’s happened? The city has grown, making for greater distances between destinations. In addition, Davis’ high cost of living has caused more students and employees to move out of town. And psychology professor Bob Sommer, who recently lamented the decline in an article in the Davis Enterprise, adds another reason: More people are taking the bus. Indeed, Unitrans is packed. “So what’s to complain about?” asks Sommer. “Bus City USA doesn’t have much resonance.”

BAN STUPIDITY!

When a group of protestors came to campus to demonstrate their opposition to genetic engineering, alumnus Mike Hart ’86 took the opportunity to make his own statement about the gullibility of some petition-signers and the need to understand scientific issues before voicing an opinion. Hart circulated his own petition among the crowd. It was titled “Petition for the Immediate Ban on the Use of Dihydrogen Monoxide!!!”

“The government has vast programs in place to develop reserves of Dihydrogen Monoxide and is even encouraging this in developing nations,” the petition noted, and it detailed the dangers of the substance, including: It’s a major contributor to the growth of genetically engineered crops; it’s a major component in acid rain; it has been found in the wells of Davis; and it has caused death in farm workers through accidental inhalation.

Dihydrogen monoxide? Yep, water.

And, yes, he got people to sign.