Thanks to my fascination today with the Titan Arum, I starting looking for other time lapse photography of flowers. Watching a flower bloom in time lapse is pure poetry to me. I loved the shots in Planet Earth. I rewinded and replayed again and again just to take it all in. (I couldn't find a direct clip but this trailer has a few examples from the series.)
And I just found a whole collection of other flower blooming time lapses here. This one (embedded below) is a bit long (almost 10 minutes) but stunningly breathtaking.
I am reminded of Slyvia Plath's poem Tulips:
Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
and
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat
Her tone is suspicious and malicious. I don't share that view, but I get that flowers have their own life to them — and it is their aliveness that speaks to me in these videos.