Corpse Flower in Bloom at the Huntington

One of the most spectacular and rare events in botany, the blooming of a corpse flower, occurred on the afternoon of Friday, June 5, 2010 at the Huntington Library, Art Collections & Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. At around 2 P.M., the staff at the Huntington’s Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science noticed that the plant was beginning to bloom, as the outer spathe, which resembles a large, umbrella-like petal, began pulling away from the plant’s spadix.

“Stinky”

The staff at the Conservatory, who have nicknamed the plant “Stinky” as it lets out the odor of rotting flesh to attract insects to promote pollination, are maintaining a blog.

According to the blog, it takes approximately seven hours for the corpse flower to bloom fully. As soon as the outer spathe began pulling away from the spadix, the plant began releasing its smell, which according to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, mimics the scent given off by a decomposing mammal.

Brooklyn’s corpse flower, also known as the carrion flower, last bloomed in 2006.

A 2010 New York Daily News article about a corpse flower in Illinois quoted a 1937 New York Times story about a bloomer at the New York Botanical Garden to give readers an idea of the the smell: “a cross between ammonia fumes and hydrogen sulfide, suggestive of spoiled meat or rotting fish.

(The 1937 bloom was the first of a corpse flower in the United States. So spectacular was the event, that the corpse flower was the official flower of the borough of The Bronx, the site of the event. The corpse flower reigned as The Bronx’s official flower until the year 2000.)

The distinctive smell of the plant is strongest for about 12 hours after the bloom, as this is when the plant is in pollination mode. The blooming period will last two days, through Sunday.

Stinky is the fourth corpse flower to bloom at The Huntington. There were previous blooms in 1999, 2002 and 2009. Standing 45 inches (114.3 centimeters) tall, Stinky is the shortest of the The Huntington’s bloomers: the 1999, 2002 and 2009 blooms stood 69 inches (175.3 cm. ), 55 inches (139.7 cm.), and 81 inches (205.7 cm.) tall, respectively.

Stinky was grown from seed produced by a University of California, Santa Barbara corpse flower, which itself had been fertilized with pollen from The Huntington 2002 bloomer. The 1999 bloomer at the Huntington was the first corpse flower grown in California.

Titan Arum

Properly known as Amorphophallus titanum (or “Titan Arum,” roughly meaning gigantic misshapen phallus), the corpse flower is indigenous to the equatorial rain forests of Sumatra, Indonesia. In the wild, a corpse flower can grow to a height of 20 feet and have a bloom 15 feet wide.

Cultivated corpse flowers typically bloom only once every 15 years, which is more frequent than their wild relatives. That’s what makes the blooming of a corpse flower so unique, that and the horrific smell and the fact that the plant grows rapidly just before the bloom after remaining in a vegetative state for much of its life.

Between May 19 and June 4th, Stinky grew 25 and 1/2 inches ( 64.8 centimeters) tall, from a mere 19 and 1/2 inches to 45 inches.

Botanical Gardens Director James Folsom says that seeing a corpse flower in bloom is a matter of being “in the right place at the right time to catch one in the act.”

The Corpse Flower is currently on view inside The Huntington’s Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science. The bloom is expected to last approximately two days.

The Huntington is open to the public from 10:30 AM to 4:30 PM and will be open to members on Satuday, June 5th.

Sources:

Los Angeles Times, “Will the weekend stink? Corpse flower gets close to blooming, Huntington says“

New York Daily News , “Crowds flock to amazing ‘corpse flower’ which reeks of rotting meat”

Reference:

• Stinky: The Blog huntington.org/huntingtonlibrary.aspx?id=4132
• Amorphophallus Titanum timelapse blooming at The Huntington in 1999 www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWTLtazrLAc
• Kew Gardens: Info on Titan arum www.kew.org/ksheets/pdfs/o10titanarum.pdf