A while back I saw this really fun solar plant. It is essentially a glorified, solar powered night-lite. You charge it up during the day in sunlight and then 
when it gets dark out it will glow. Fun! Right?
Unfortunately it is from Japan and I couldn’t find anywhere to buy it… and even if I could I am guessing it would be rather pricey. Luckily however I managed to stumble across a similar product that is cheap and available… and what is better than that!
The Solar Flower is a lot like the Solar Plant, except it is shaped like a tulip. It has a green bendable stem, which nice because you can aim it towards the sun. In the center of the “flower” is a little solar cell. It charges a battery in the stem. When it gets dark out, there is a little white LED in the flower and the whole things start to glow. The whole thing is quite fun.
Since the flower is frosted, it glows more than shines. It is bright but I wouldn’t go reading any books with it or anything crazy. 
It is probably enough light to show which a path goes in a garden or something… not quite enough light to disconnect your house from the power grid, in a desperate attempt to stick it to the man.
It is winter right now, we are not getting much light and on top of that it is also cloudy. Even with that the flower still manages to gather enough light to glow for a few hours. On sunny days has glowed for atleast 8 hours… I went to bed before it did.
The Solar Flower comes in 3 different colors, red, white and yellow. Since all the circuitry looks pretty simple, there is a lot of fun hacking that could be had. It would probably be pretty simple to rig up something just like the Solar Plant.
You can get them in a set of 3 from Amazon for about $30… And when you do that I should get a little piece of the action if I setup the link correctly. Also you can buy them individually from a different site, possbily the manufacturer.
- Mother Nature makes it glow
- Yet another deliteful reason to replace plants with plastic
- Reduces our dependence on foreign oil
Pros:
- Lets be serious…
- It is a glowing plastic solar powered flower
- If that does not make you giggle this is probably not the right thing for you