(Photo: Milwaukee Public Museum)
The Milwaukee
Public Museum’s titan arum flowered on January 15, 2010 after a month-long
wait. Most of us will never get to see a blooming titan arum
in person because they are endangered in the wild and are not all that common
in cultivation. It takes several years for the plant to bloom and then the
flower (one of the world’s largest) only lasts for a short time.
“The titan arum
is one of the wonders of the plant world because of its sheer size and rapid rate
of growth,” says Neil Luebke, curator of botany at the Milwaukee Public Museum.
Indeed, the museum’s titan arum, which stands at 7 feet 8 ½ inches tall, grew
several inches a day since the shoot emerged from the soil in mid-December. The
plant expends so much energy growing so quickly that it can’t sustain itself
for long and usually only stays open for two days, according to Luebke.
Known as the
world’s tallest flower, the titan arum is technically the world’s largest
unbranched cluster of flowers. (The largest single flower is rafflesia arnoldii, which
can grow up to 3 feet wide.) In the wild titan arums can grow to be over ten
feet tall, but in cultivation the world
record is 9.55 feet. A spokeswoman at the museum dubbed the exotic plant:
the “Godzilla of the plant world.”
A blooming titan
arum usually draws large crowds because it’s so rare, but also because of the
foul odor it emits. It smells like rotting flesh or decaying meat, which is why
it’s also known as the “corpse plant.” The smell is so intense that the human nose can
detect it from over a half mile away.
The horrid smell
attracts pollinators from afar. In nature the corpse plant only grows in the
rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia. They are threatened because of rain forest
destruction. The International Union of Conservation lists them as vulnerable.
(Photo: Milwaukee Public Museum)
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