Witnessing a historic and rarest event -- The blooming of Corpse Flower

Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit the Foster Botanical Garden in Honolulu, HI. The Occasion? Being witness to blooming of one of the world’s largest and rarest flowering structures, the corpse flower also known as titan arum. The corpse flower blooms for a very short time (12 hours) and when in bloom emits a very pungent odor like a dead and decaying animal or corpse.

Corpse flower at Foster Botanical Garden, Honolulu, HI

The spathe  of  the flower 

Close up of the skirt like structure called  Spathe. 

Why the strong and pungent smell? It all comes to continuation of species.  The smell, color and temperature is for attracting insects for pollination to continue the species. Dung beetles, flesh flies and other carnivorous insects are the primary pollinators of this type of flower.

The skirt and the origin of the phallus like structure 

The corpse flower has designed a very clever way of fooling the insects into believing that it is a piece of flesh/ dead animal due to the smell, warming itself up to 98 degrees Fahrenheit (36.7 Celsius)  and the burgundy color, attracting the beetles. Eventually as the insect take-off after sitting on the flower, they have pollens sticking on their legs for pollinating other flower. Once this  task  completed the flower collapses and shrivel up.

The scientific name of the corpse flower is Amorphophallus titanium. (from Ancient Greek amorphos, "without form, misshapen" + phallos, "phallus", and titan, "giant"). The legendary Sir David Attenborough first used the name titan arum to refer to this magnificent tropical plant in the BBC series The Private Lives of Plants because he felt viewers might be offended by the plant’s Latin name, Amorphophallus titanum. The corpse flower is not a single flower but an inflorescence (a stalk of many flowers). It consists of mixture of tiny male and female flowers clumped together at the base of phallus like structure called  (spadix) surrounded by a beautiful  pleated skirt-like covering (spathe) that is bright green on the outside and deep maroon/ burgundy  inside when opened. 

The female flower precedes the male flowers to maturity, hence self-pollination is not possible, requiring the help of insects.

Life cycle of the corpse plant. Courtesy  UC Davis

 

Life cycle , courtesy Kew Botanical Garden, UK

The inflorescence which can grow over 3 metres (10 ft) in height rises from the tuber, which is a large spherical underground stem modified to store food for the plant. It is very large and weighs around 100 pounds. After the inflorescence withers-off, a single leaf sprouts from the tuber reaching a height of 6-7 meter and branching into numerous leaflets. Every year the leaf withers and new emerges till the plant is ready to flower again.    This  cycle continues through  40 years which is the total life span of this plant

If pollinated, the stalk grows into a large club like head of orange seeds.

The seeds of corpse plant : Courtesy  Funflower Facts.com 

The corpse flower was first discovered in Sumatra in 1878 by Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari, according to the UC Botanical Garden. The plant grows in the wild only in tropical rainforests of Asia. It is an endangered plant because of habitat destruction in most part of Indonesia, decrease in insect   population that pollinate the plant and help in seed distribution. Indonesia has probably lost 72% of its native rainforests and the deforestation continues.

The burgundy Spathe 

The plant is very difficult to cultivate and only handful of places across the globe have been successful in doing so! It also requires 7-10 years of vegetative growth before blooming for the first time. There are about 100 cultivated corpse plants around the world.

A man smelling the corpse plant. 

Another flower with very strong odor is Rafflesia arnoldii, world largest bloom. It is a parasitic plant, with no visible roots, leaves or stem. It grows to a diameter of 3 feet, weighing as much as 15 pounds. When in bloom, the Rafflesia emits a repulsive odor, similar to that of rotting meat. This odor attracts insects that pollinate the plant.

Plants like this are magnificent and make us realize the complexity and biodiversity of the botanical world.  

References:

https://www.usbg.gov/return-titan

http://www.virtualherbarium.org/amorph/amorphophallus-history.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphophallus_titanum

http://discovermagazine.com/2013/oct/15-exquisite-corpse-flowers

https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/flower.html

http://www.kew.org/science-conservation/plants-fungi/amorphophallus-titanum-titan-arum