Carnival celebrated at Macy’s Flower Show

Among all the markers that signal springtime in Chicago, the annual Macy’s Flower Show is one of the most colorful and highly anticipated.

This year’s show, running March 26-April 9 at the State Street store, celebrates all things carnival, through more than 10,000 live flowers, plants and trees representing more than 170 varieties of flora from across the country and across the globe including the Netherlands, Guam, Canada, Hawaii and Oregon. To keep the show’s plant life as fresh as, well, as daisy, throughout the two-week run, the flowers and greens are watered daily and nearly 30 percent of them will be switched out/replaced about halfway through the show, according to a Macy’s spokesperson.

Vignette and gardens will include a carousel with horses, bumper cars, a fun house, tunnel of love, a fortune teller’s garden, Midway’s games garden and concessions stand all created (in all or in part) from living plants and flowers.

This year’s show include four specialty plants including:

— The Black Bat Plant, with deep purple leaves reminiscent of the bat wings

— The Venus Fly Trap, with its deathly “trapping” structures that snap shut to catch and feed on potential prey

— The carnivorous Pitcher Plant, also known as “pitfall traps,” which catches prey in a deep open cavity filled with digestive fluid

— The Kalanchoe Magnificent, whose jagged leaves fall off and land on soil, spawning little kalanchoes from the edges of the leaves earning it the name “the Gremlin.” (The “babies” then grow into more kalanchoes and repeat the process creating a seemingly “endless” bloom.)

In addition, the famed Walnut Room restaurant will be featuring specialty carnival-themed cocktails including the Ginger Pear Shrub, the Sparkling Wild Hibiscus, the Wild Hibiscus Mojito, the Hibiscus Tea Koval Rye and the Daisy Cutter.

Special events, tours, on-site classes, cooking demonstrations and musical performances are scheduled throughout the show’s run.

The show is free and open during regular store hours. Visit www.macys.com/flowershow for more details and full show schedule.