Editorial March 23, 1987 Issue

Once in a lifetime

Michael D. Rissler

"Horticulturally speaking, it's a once-in-a-lifetime event." That's the way the blooming of the rare Puya raimondi was described by a botanist at the University of California's Botanical Gardens.^{The Boston Globe, September 14, 1986, p. 110 .}

Three decades ago, a seed of this rare Bolivian plant was brought to the Botanical Gardens. The plant is a real "late bloomer," and wasn't expected to flower for more than a century. But last year, to the delight of its keepers, the center flower stalk started to shoot up and grew nearly two stories high some seventy-five years ahead of schedule!

I couldn't help wondering about the botanists' response when they received such a seed thirty years ago. What kept them from just discarding it? After all, they never expected to see it bloom. But then, of course, there is a kind of caring, of nurturing, that doesn't abandon once-in-a-lifetime things—in the world of botany as well as in other worlds.

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