Thursday Mount Rushmore: Flowers that Represent the Eagles' 2021 Season
Chlorophyll? More like Borophyll!
If you missed it on Wednesday, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni presented a botanical metaphor. In building his football team, he is akin to a gardener, growing a flower. The roots grow larger and more expansive, creating a stable foundation for the burgeoning plant to burst though the soil, and win the NFC East.
Here’s how it went, courtesy of master transcriber Brandon Lee Gowton at Bleeding Green:
Hopefully the Eagles are watering and fertilizing every single day.
In honor of Sirianni’s verdant explanation there, we present to you our Mount Rushmore of flowers that represent the Philadelphia Eagles’ 2021 season:
Corpse flower
We’re going with the corpse flower because the Birds will be pretty much dead if they lose to the 0-7 Lions this Sunday. It would drop them to 2-6 on the season.
The “Titan Arum” is rare. Apparently this thing takes seven to ten years to gain enough energy to even bloom.
Here’s the Chicago Botanical Garden explaining why the flower stinks so bad:
Chemically, the scent is a combination of dimethyl trisulfide, isovaleric acid, dimethyl disulfide, benzyl alcohol, indole, and trimethylamine—or, as our friends at the Huntington Botanical Gardens described it, a combination of Limburger cheese, garlic, rotting fish, and smelly feet. The plant is trying hard to attract its native Sumatran pollinators: carrion beetles and flesh flies that are attracted to the stench of decaying, rotten meat (the kind of place they’d want to lay their eggs). The precise combination of odors is meant to mimic an exact state of decomposition—something that is not fresh, but not so rotten that it is no longer attractive.
The stench of decay? Sounds like the Birds’ defense. Heyo!
A corpse flower. Photo Credit Treehugger.com
Eastern skunk cabbage
Pepe Le Pew may have been cancelled, but this plant evokes his name and stinkiness.
Apparently animals avoid eating skunk cabbage, because it causes a “burning sensation” when eaten. That’s the same sensation you feel when Jalen Hurts is throwing up garbage time stats to make the score look palatable, when, in fact, the game was actually a blowout.
From the National Wildlife Federation:
“The skunk cabbage gets its name from the unpleasant odor it emits. This scent is a way for the plant to attract pollinators that are attracted to rotting meat. The scent is especially noticeable when the plant is injured. It travels easily because it is carried on the warm air that constantly rises from the spathe.”
Photo Credit: Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens
The Giant Blood-Sucking Plant from Little Shop of Horrors
This movie came out in 1986 but ended up being a cult classic. It’s about a singing plant that needs human blood to survive, which is similar to what it’s like to support the Philadelphia Eagles. It feels like they are sucking the blood out of us.
At the end of the movie, it’s revealed that the plant, named Audrey, is actually an alien, focused on world domination. But Rick Moranis thwarts the plant and electrocutes it instead.
I am not making this up. That’s the movie plot.
Scarlet Begonias
I only picked this one because it’s a cool Grateful Dead song. Sublime covered it back in the day. I don’t think people realize this, but the first Sublime album had a bunch of cover songs on it. Among them: Smoke Two Joints, We’re Only Gonna Die for Our Arrogance, 5446, Rivers of Babylon, and a couple others. If you don’t know, then now you know.