New titan arum blossom may be on a record pace

The growers of a rare flower, the giant but malodorous titan arum or “corpse flower,” say a large plant that blossomed four years ago is about to blossom again, and may be on a record-setting pace for cultivated titan arums.

“It’s going to be big,” says Mohammad Fayyaz, the director of the Botany Garden and Greenhouses. “Already, it is almost 6-feet tall.”

Four years ago, Fayyaz and his colleagues were witness to a huge titan arum blossom that grew in the university’s Botany Greenhouse to a size of 8.5 feet, just 3.5 inches shy of the then-world record set in 1932. The current world record, set in 2003 at the Bonn Botanic Garden in Germany, stands just an inch short of nine feet.

Although there is no way of predicting how big the latest corpse flower blossom will be, Fayyaz says the plant has a chance to make a run at the world record.

The 2001 bloom at UW–Madison remains the largest such bloom ever in the United States and is the very same flower that, sometime within the next week or so, will unfurl its skirt-like green and purple spathe and release its trademark ripe carrion odor.

Although the big flowers are noted for being rare and, supposedly, difficult to cultivate, this latest blossom is the fourth corpse flower to bloom in the UW–Madison Botany Greenhouse in the past five years. To date, an estimated 64 cultivated titan arum blossoms have occurred since 1889 when the first such bloom caused a sensation at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, England.

Four years ago, when the flower first bloomed at UW–Madison, the phenomenon attracted thousands of curious visitors, many from out of state, and caused the university’s Web server to crash as many thousands more from around the world sought live Web cam images of the flower.

In nature, the corpse flower grows only in the equatorial rain forests of Sumatra, Indonesia. In addition to its size and beauty, the plant is noted mostly for the powerful stench of its blossoms, a trait designed to attract the carrion beetles, flies and sweat bees that pollinate it.

The plant grows from a tuber that can weigh as much as 170 pounds. Its blossom lasts only a few days before the spadix, the tall fleshy central column of the flower, collapses under its own weight.

In the strict botanical sense, the large blossom is not a true flower, but an inflorescence, or collection of flowers, which emerges after a long dormant period and grow up to six inches a day over a period of up to twelve weeks. As the cream-colored spike reaches maturity, the spathe opens to form a vast, ribbed, frilly-edged trumpet, greenish on the outside but deep maroon within.

To science, the plant is known as Amorphophallus titanum. It is a member of the same family of plants that includes the familiar calla lily and philodendron. They may live to be 40 years old and may bloom only two or three times.

The titan arum’s characteristic road kill odor occurs when the plant’s pollen is receptive. The spadix heats up from within and gives off a stench that has been likened to rotting fish. The smell attracts pollinators from great distances.

The moment the blossom unfurls can’t be predicted, says Fayyaz, but it is expected to open sometime within the next 10 days.

To accommodate the curious, the UW–Madison Botany Greenhouse will be open to the public beginning Thursday, June 2 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Greenhouse will not be open this weekend (June 4 and 5). But when the plant blossoms, in all probability next week, hours will be extended.