Within days of each other, 2 extremely rare ‘Corpse Flowers’ bloomed, and then wilted within a few hours.
Native to Sumatra, the Corpse Flower or Titan Arum is renowned for its intense smell, which can spread over half a mile and according to visitors resembles ‘puke’ or ‘rotting meat’.
Sumatra - Westernmost Island of Indonesia
The bloom is also visually spectacular as the flower can stand up to 10 feet high and visitors to Botanic Gardens at the University of Basel, Switzerland (April 30th) and Ohio State University (April 25th) were treated to the spectacle first hand.
The whole process lasts about 5 hours. The plant first becomes hot, as the flower emerges. This is thought to help the intensity and spread of the odor. The fragrance attracts insects from a wide radius, which become trapped in the base of the flower and covered in pollen. As the bloom dies off, the insects become free to cross-pollenate other plants, so moving the reproductive cycle along.
Titan Arum - 'Corpse Flower'
Titan Arum can grow extremely fast and require very fertile soil. On average in the wild, they bloom every ten years, but when cultivated in a greenhouse or garden this can be much longer. Only 100 blooms have been cultivated – ie grown outside of the plant’s natural habitat. Following one such success in the New York Botanical Gardens in 1937 the flower became the official flower of the Bronx, replaced with the Day Lily in 2000.
You can see the OSU Corpse Flower on a live webcam here (take a look at what is left of the flower).
Filed under: Current Events, Education, Global Perspectives, Nature and Wildlife Tagged: | Basel, conservation, Daylily, earth science, Education, environment, Flower, Indonesia, k-12, maps101, National Geographic, New York Botanical Garden, Ohio State University, Online Resource, Social Studies, sumatra, Titan Arum, wildlife
