{"id":7159,"date":"2008-10-25T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-25T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/10\/25\/elephant-shaped-ganesh-plant-a-small-miracle-in-new-york\/"},"modified":"2008-10-25T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-25T12:00:00","slug":"elephant-shaped-ganesh-plant-a-small-miracle-in-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/10\/25\/elephant-shaped-ganesh-plant-a-small-miracle-in-new-york\/","title":{"rendered":"Elephant-shaped Ganesh Plant, A Small Miracle in New York"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/ny_local\/queens\/2008\/10\/21\/2008-10-21_elephantshaped_ganesh_growth_cured_my_il.html\">www.nydailynews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">QUEENS, NEW YORK, October 23, 2008:  Sam Lal, a Hindu who immigrated from Guyana 30 years ago, found a flower near his garage growing in the unusual shape of an elephant&#8217;s head and trunk. At just about the same time, a back pain that had been hurting him for months disappeared. &#8220;This formation came to heal my illness,&#8221; said the 60-year-old Hindu.<\/p>\n<p>Experts at the Queens Botanical Garden identified the plant as a member of the amaranth family, which is native to Africa, India and southern Central America. Horticulturalists at the garden have never seen an amaranth take an elephant-like shape, garden spokesman Tim Heimerle said. &#8220;For it to have that long trunk like this is not a natural thing,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Lal believes the flower&#8217;s position &#8211; growing through concrete, facing a garage he converted to a prayer space &#8211; is evidence of a connection to Ganesh, revered as the Remover of Obstacles. Lal knows some people will be skeptical and insisted he did nothing to sculpt the flower. Experts said that wouldn&#8217;t be possible anyway, because the plant is too fragile. <\/p>\n<p>With the fall chill in the air, Lal covers the flower at night to protect it from cold; amaranths are frost-tender. &#8220;It hurts me to know I&#8217;ll lose it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.nydailynews.com QUEENS, NEW YORK, October 23, 2008: Sam Lal, a Hindu who immigrated from Guyana 30 years ago, found a,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}