The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's annual Philadelphia International Flower Show, at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, has, over the past few years, saluted New Orleans jazz, Irish legends, and 'Bella Italia.' This year's spectacle, from February 28 to March 7, strove to take on the world, or a sample of it, anyway, with "Passport to the World" as its theme.

A 'hot air balloon,' out of "Around the World in 80 Days," decorated with a map of the world, its continents and oceans alike made of flowers, greeted us at the entrance to the show, the Explorer's Garden. We were ushered into the American Institute of Floral Design's South African exhibit by a group of figures in grass skirts, with feathered headdresses and flowery shields. African masks, adorned with flowers, awaited us within. A towering metal giraffe, its spots and mane floral; macaws with flowery tails; and a lion of reeds and grasses sent us on our way to Singapore, in one direction, and New Zealand, in the other.

Across the way, tulips, a canal, and bicycles welcomed us to Robertson Flowers' representation of the Netherlands. In Burke Brothers Landscape Contractors' Brazil, an animated earth-and-air-plant alligator, with flashing red eyes, its gaping mouth ominously full of pink feathers, lay hungrily in wait for the rest of the frolicking flock of flamingoes, with bodies of pink flowers. In Jamie Rothstein Floral Designs' India, a proud peacock, with a green mossy back, and a colorful tail of real peacock feathers, prepared us for the pièce de résistance, a more-or-less life-sized, smiling elephant of gray mosses, with a red floral tongue, and other colorful flowers adorning it.

A whimsical trip along US One gave us, to the south, a bird of green foliage with a fishing rod and a flowery fish, at the Florida end, and to the north, a red floral lobster, its claws red peppers, at the Maine end. At a display of regional front porches, I enjoyed, from some distance, the pink astilbe and flowering tree and the-I thought-cute or campy sentiment on a placard, "One day pink will be just for Princesses," until, drawing closer, I saw the breast cancer awareness pink ribbons that were part of the scene and realized the serious, and hopeful, intent of the message.

Here and there, in the displays, scores of prize-winning daffodils, narcissuses, tulips, hyacinths, lilies, and amaryllises helped to herald the approach of spring. At this writing, another weekend of Flower Show remains. For breathtaking sights and a breath of spring air, get there if you can.