Time-lapse plants
March 25, 2009 11:40 AM   Subscribe

So bored you could watch plants grow? Okay, start with Corn [0:35] and Radishes [0:46].

Round it out with:

Beans [0:59]
Bittercress [0:50]
Burr oak [0:59]
Cress [1:40]
Fast plant [1:38]
Fungi (footage from the National Archives) [4:22]
Mushrooms (the magic kind) [0:43]
Mushrooms (the oyster kind) [1:03]
Peas [1:17]
Peppers [1:29]
Pitcher plant [2:30]
Potatoes [1:40]
Giant pumpkin (with dynamite!) [1:28]
Stone pine [0:37]
Sunflowers (warning, unhappy ending) [3:51]
Toadstool [1:01]
Watercress [0:45]
Wheatgrass [1:15]

And a bonus for people of a certain age: Sesame Street explains how plants grow [0:29].

Previously.
posted by mudpuppie (25 comments total) 33 users marked this as a favorite
 
So amazingly wonderful, thanks.
posted by Pants! at 11:50 AM on March 25, 2009


I am so impatient that I had to forward through that 35 second corn video. I need help.
posted by special-k at 12:02 PM on March 25, 2009 [3 favorites]


Shit, it is time to plant the garden already?
posted by waxboy at 12:03 PM on March 25, 2009


TL; DW
posted by monospace at 12:06 PM on March 25, 2009


Nature is incredible and never ceases to amaze . . . great post!
posted by eggman at 12:14 PM on March 25, 2009


If you open them all in different tabs and let them play down to the end and then hit Reload All Tabs you get a nutritious musical salad!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:17 PM on March 25, 2009


Wow, I just lost all my urges to every eat vegetables.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:19 PM on March 25, 2009


Plants are so creepy.
posted by dmd at 12:21 PM on March 25, 2009


it needs benny hill music

(yes I saw that one site a while ago, but I am lazy and dont want to find it)
posted by ShawnString at 12:30 PM on March 25, 2009


My wife and I just planted some Basil in our windowsill this weekend. This morning we found 3 little spuds pushing through the dirt! Awesome. These movies are all great.

I once had the pleasure of watching film of a Dodder plant being outsmarted by some other plant with musical accompaniment by Brian Dewan with David Byrne sitting behind me in the audience! It was a Cabinet Magazine event. I forget which plant was able to resist the dodder's rotating grip. It was great though. The dodder was trying to wrap itself but the natural swing of the other plant countered the dodder and it managed to stay free.

Films from the Prelinger Archive
Ant City, 9 min, and The Dodder, 4 min
posted by JBennett at 12:35 PM on March 25, 2009


I remember watching a time-lapse of a Morningglory plant and being COMPLETELY FREAKED OUT. It kept ...moving! Searching! Clasping onto things and spinning! spinning toward the light!

Gah!

On a lighter note, I planted a small mint plant in it's own big planter in the windowsill and it might as well be time-lapse with the way it's growin'. Seriously, mint doesn't fuck around.


Future AskMe question: What do I do with all this goddamned mint? Also, the cilantro's dramatic 90 degree turns during the day as the light moves creeps me out a little. Plants. Shouldn't. Move. it's a small step toward drinking human blood and talkin' jive.
posted by The Whelk at 12:48 PM on March 25, 2009 [3 favorites]


Carnivorous plants are fucking awesome, but I'm so glad those things aren't big enough to eat ME. I'd say they're nastier to insects than carnivorous animals are to the things they eat!
posted by kldickson at 12:55 PM on March 25, 2009


THE PLANTS ARE COMING TO EAT US

THE VEGANS WILL BE EATEN FIRST
posted by kldickson at 12:56 PM on March 25, 2009


Watching these reminds me very much that our notion of "movement" is very much based on frame of reference. Being a southerner, I remember watching kudzu grow during the summer and thinking "If I fell asleep here, for more than 12 hours, I might have a hard time getting away." Which always makes me think of Niven's slow life concept - some things which are alive simply live slower than others. To the degree that we short lived, fast moving things might not be aware of them as alive at all.
posted by strixus at 1:00 PM on March 25, 2009


This reminded me of an art project, or nature film (I forget which), I saw on Kudzu. It showed this vine devour a tree as if it were a lion on a gazelle. It was freakish. Wish I could find those again, but alas, youtube and google turned up nothing.
posted by sundri at 1:17 PM on March 25, 2009


I liked that they blew up the pumpkin.

(mint - dry it for tea, or make mint juleps. for extra yummy mint juleps, stuff sprigs of mint into a bottle of brandy and let it steep there for a month or two. mmmm)
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 1:30 PM on March 25, 2009


Mushrooms are so phallic.

More
posted by plaidhatter at 1:34 PM on March 25, 2009


I am so impatient that I had to forward through that 35 second corn video. I need help

I forwarded through the sunflower one explicitly to watch the unhappy ending. How do you think I feel?
posted by Adam_S at 1:43 PM on March 25, 2009


I love the beans. Those little guys are so expressive. Makes me feel bad for eating them.
posted by null14 at 1:46 PM on March 25, 2009




The bluegrass in the background is perfect. I wish they showed more of the full plant though and not just the seedlings...
posted by jckll at 3:58 PM on March 25, 2009


"It can only be the thought of verdure to come, which prompts us in the autumn to buy these dormant white lumps of vegetable matter covered by a brown papery skin, and lovingly to plant them and care for them. It is a marvel to me that under this cover they are labouring unseen at such a rate within to give us the sudden awesome beauty of spring flowering bulbs. While winter reigns the earth reposes but these colourless green ideas sleep furiously."
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 12:21 AM on March 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


Man, just watching those psylocibin mushrooms grow is tripping me out.
posted by tehloki at 11:04 AM on March 26, 2009


I thought the sunflowers were going to grow to be huge and then shrivel to their deaths, but it was different flowers than I was thinking (or they died before becoming the huge yellow flowers I was thinking about). But I did get impatient as well! I, too, wish it wasn't just seedlings but also showed the continued growth. I wanted corncobs!

Great post.
posted by bluefly at 12:35 PM on March 26, 2009


I have just opened all those links as background tabs. The music is…trippy.

Dldkjfw(&(#OIJ$crash...
posted by five fresh fish at 8:27 PM on March 26, 2009


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