The Rare, Giant corpse flower at Foster Botanical garden has bloomed

The giant corpse flower with the spathe cut open 

A rare, giant Titan Arum, or "corpse flower," has bloomed at the Foster Botanical Garden, Honolulu, Hawaii. The flower is 6 feet 3 inches tall, towering over the neighboring plants in the hot-house at the garden.

The unbloomed corpse flower photo by Hawaii News Now

The plant does not have a regular blooming season and sometimes decades go by between the sporadic blossoms. Once bloomed, it is expected that the bloom will last for 24-48 hours after which it collapses rapidly.

The flower is named after the pungent odor the bloom emits which resemble a decaying animal or corpse. Why the strong and pungent smell? It all comes to the continuation of species.  The smell, color, and temperature are all means 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 male and female flowers at the base of the spadix or phallus 

The beautiful burgundy skirt  and the phallus

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 another flower. Once this task is completed the flower collapses and shrivels up.

The scientific name of the corpse flower is Amorphophallus titanium. (from Ancient Greek amorphous, "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 a 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.

The inflorescence which can grow over 3 meters (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 sprout 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 lifespan of this plant

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

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 plant is very difficult to cultivate, and only a 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.

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

The pleated skirt 

The beautiful skirt 

The edges of the skirt

The collapsed corpse flower courtesy: Foster Botanical Garden


Time-lapse video of corpse flower bloom 

Watch the corpse flower bloom in this captivating and astonishing time-lapse video. The Chicago Botanic Garden’s rare titan arum bloomed and opened over an exciting 24-hour period after growing for more than 11 years.