A Philadelphia tradition

All around campus today, students are packing suitcases, buying train tickets and sharing cabs. Whether their final destinations are home, the beach or the slopes, it does not matter. They are getting the hell out of here.

After class, I will return to my dorm room, where I will stay. Although I may be in the vast minority, I get the feeling I'm not entirely alone in my choice. It would be interesting to get a statistic on how many term papers are attempted, but not actually written, during spring break.

Whatever your motivation may be, if you are staying in the Philadelphia area over the next few days, I have a suggestion. You, Penn student, should pay $20 to look at a bunch of plants. No really, I'm serious. The Philadelphia Flower Show opens this Sunday and runs during the week from 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. The show is worth attending, but not for the reasons you'd expect and definitely not for the ones that the show's organizer, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, gives in press releases.

It's true that the Philadelphia Flower Show is the largest indoor flower exhibition in the world. And the proceeds from America's oldest flower show -- it began in 1829 -- benefit the programs of America's oldest horticultural society. It's also true that during its weeklong run every year, the show attracts about 275,000 visitors. The exhibits alone take up 10 acres of space in the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

At first, the PFS is exactly what you'd expect: plants in dirt and a lot people trying to look at said plants in dirt. It seems that after Adaptation, everyone thinks they know something about orchids. On a busy Saturday morning, the crowd bears too much resemblance to the type one would find at the same time at the King of Prussia Mall. So I suggest going later in the day and immediately passing up both the flower displays and the crowd near the entrance. Head into the back where the individual and club entries -- the wild things -- are.

What's often missed about the Philadelphia Flower Show is that it is a convention, as in a comic book convention or a Star Trek convention. The people who run and participate in the flower show dedicate their lives to things that photosynthesize. Obviously, they are totally harmless and completely crazy. Last year, I spent some quality time at the booth of the Philadelphia Cactus & Succulent Society. Believe it or not, it's pretty interesting to talk to a group of people who are huge fans of cacti.

In addition to being a convention, the flower show is also a competition with numerous categories. There's the window box/lamp post class, the terrace class, the designs for jewelry class, the table class, the niche class, the miniature settings class, the pressed plant material class, the defined and open space class and the miniature arrangement class.

At the last flower show, my friend and I perused all the entries and kept up a Mystery Science Theater 3000-style running dialogue. It's pretty easy to alternately mock and appreciate gaudy model wedding receptions and tiny, intricate jewelry made out of flowers. The worst stuff looked like it came from a backyard in New Jersey and the best from the Institute of Contemporary Art. In all, it took us about six hours to make our way through the 10 acres, a fair amount of entertainment for the entry fee.

Even better, one of the organizers seems to have read my mind last year. Now, on the evening of Wednesday March 9, there will be open cash bars at the flower show.

What you'll find at the Philadelphia Flower Show displays is often as beautiful or bizarre as anything at the Philadelphia Museum of Art or the M tter Museum. And, if anything, the flower show is more seasonal and fleeting. Whether you spend your visit mostly admiring or laughing, it is difficult to overlook the fact that the flower show is the product of an enormous amount of time and dedication. Not unlike a 15-page paper.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.