Giants Among Us

On the Cook family farm in Colorado, cows aren't the whole story. Every day, when the cows finish feasting, Dennis and Calvin sneak away, past the big dairy barn to a secret spot just behind a wall of hay to a world of eye-popping color.

What started as a hobby with just 13 plants has become a full-blown obsession. An astounding half-acre of giant dahlias dazzles all who visit. For ten years, it's been their special project, just father and son working their "patch" of thousands of dahlias. There are a whopping 400 different varieties and Calvin can name them all. Some are six, seven, even eight feet tall, and the monstrous flowers typically measure one foot across (figure A), though sometimes, one ruler just won’t do.

"I tell them I got flowers and they just figure a little flower patch," says Calvin. "and they come out here and they’re really pretty amazed that this is out here in the middle of nowhere, out on the farm."

Just wait till you see what tall corn means in Rossville, Kansas. When the dog days of summer hit this sleepy little town, it’s hard not to notice some mighty strange behavior--a single stalk of corn waving in a huge corn field. That would be the sign that an extra-tall stalk has been found--with the help of a spotter outside of the field and of a second person who has been sent in to find it.

You can blame this craziness on the annual corn festival. In addition to serious bragging rights, the winner of the competition gets $50 and a place of honor at the festival parade. They'll be riding up front and in-style as grand marshals, perhaps the most coveted seat in Rossville.

How high does a stalk of corn have to be to win in Rossville? Here's a hint: a stalk that measured 12 feet 10 inches didn't win. Tune in to find out!

Something has had people looking up at the New York Botanical Garden. A century plant (Agave americana), more at home in the desert Southwest, has gotten comfortable in the middle of the Bronx. For the last 50 years, this spiky plant has called the botanical garden home and has remained a three-foot shrub (figure B).

It’s been fed and watered, and generally cared for as a nice healthy plant. Now it's rewarding its caretakers with a beautiful blossom on a stem that shot up 30 feet into the air in just a few short months. In fact, it grew so tall so quickly that a glass pane had to be removed from the Conservatory ceiling (figure C), allowing the century plant to get a bird's-eye view of curious humans below.

The century plant can live to be 100 years old, yet it blooms only once during its lifetime. It's a sight that most people never get to see.

There is a downside: A blooming century plant can only mean one thing, that the plant is soon going to die.

"The tissues begin to form the flower, and they send up a very tall flower stalk," Dr. Kim Tripp, vice president of horticulture for the New York Botanical Garden, explains. "That process sets the plant on a fatal course that it cannot change." All of its energy goes into producing that giant stalk and those delicate flowers. The yellow blossoms will float to the earth as seeds, and the century plant, having done its job, will go to the big greenhouse in the sky.

But the experts say, don't cry for the century plant, because it’s just doing what comes naturally. "I think right now, this is a very happy plant," Tripp says. "I mean, this plant has accomplished what it intended to do for its entire life cycle.
How nature achieves these incredible adaptations is amazing. We kind of go along blithely, not paying much attention to it and then suddenly, something like this happens and we realize what an incredible world we inhabit."

Underneath a retractable pool cover lurks the infamous "Victoria," as in Victoria amazonica, also known as the giant water lily of the Amazon.

Giant water lilies aren't something you typically find in a suburban backyard. And the Stylers aren't your typical suburban family. Young Will was the one who started this whole giant water lily thing going when, at age 12, he ordered a plant out of a catalog. But the cute little babies quickly outgrew the kiddie pool. And Trey and Nancy Styler, Will's parents, dug up their backyard to accommodate these garden giants, putting in two pools that hold more than 4,500 gallons of water. Nancy has become known worldwide as an expert on these plants. The Stylers have even been to the Amazon twice to see the giants in their native environment. The family jokes that "Victoria" is Will's step-sister.

When the sun goes down and the moon is high, an adult Victoria produces one perfect white blossom (figure F). This is the female flower and the start of the pollination process. The white flower blooms for one day. The next night, the flower turns pink and becomes a male (figure G).

Nancy loves this beautiful, complicated plant, from the showy flower to the prickly stem. She spends hours caring for "Victoria."

"It's all worth it when you get a group of school kids here, each child standing on the plant, and you can see it through their eyes and get just as excited all over again," she says.

Stand on the plant? That's right. Under the correct conditions you can stand on this plant, and that has provided the Stylers with hours of fun (figure H).

So the Stylers really are just one big happy family--Trey, Nancy, Will and a thorny little sister named Victoria.