http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/07/0718_030718_stinkyflower.html
Researchers Uncover Secrets of Gigantic "Corpse Flower"
John Pickrell in Englandfor National Geographic News
July 18, 2003
A flower taller than a man, stinking strongly of putrefying roadkill and colored deep burgundy to mimic rotting flesh, sounds like something from a low-budget science fiction movie. But Indonesia's titan arum—or "corpse flower," as known by locals—is a real, if rare, phenomenon, pollinated in the wild by carrion-seeking insects.
The latest to stir up a buzz is the first public blooming of a titan arum in Washington, D.C. The flower, in the United States Botanic Garden, on the National Mall next to the U.S. Capitol, is expected to open—and release its fetid odor—any time from today. Public interest is so high that the Botanic Garden has a hotline with recorded updates about the flower's progress.
The plethora of new blooms in collections worldwide are giving botanists the chance to break long-held records for size and longevity, and probe the biology of the plant as never before.
A mature, bucket-shaped corpse flower emerges from a huge underground storage tuber once every one to three years. Producing that enormous, frilly inflorescence takes a lot of effort. In young specimens, and in non-flowering years, the plant unfurls a single leaf which can reach the size and appearance of a small tree with many "leaflets." However, in preparation for just a few days of flowering, the plant must shed its leaf and sit dormant for up to four months to muster its energy reserves.
The "flower" is in fact a structure known as an inflorescence. In members of the Aroid family, the inflorescence is composed of a petal-like outer spathe, and the spadix, a central column dotted with hundreds of inconspicuous flowers.
Record-Breakers
A mature eight-year-old captive titan arum, Amorphophallus titanum, typically reaches six feet (1.82 meters) tall. However, in May, one inflorescence in Bonn, Germany, produced a breathtaking (perhaps literally) bloom nearly nine feet (2.74 meters) tall, setting a new record for size. The previous record was set in 1932, when an inflorescence in Wageningen, Holland, reached 2.67 meters in height.
Reports of inflorescences larger than this have appeared over the years, but there is no evidence to support these claims, said Wilhelm Barthlott, director of the University of Bonn Botanical Garden. The Bonn plant's enormous tuber now weighs 176 pounds (80 kilograms). "Constantly in the literature there is a false transcription of feet into meters," said Barthlott, but many measurements also include the height of the tuber, instead of the height from the soil surface, he said. Measured this way, the Bonn flower would be over 11 feet in height (3.40 meters).
No one knows for sure how big wild titan arums can grow, added Barthlott.
Another titan, named Ted, that bloomed last month in the University of California-Davis Botanical Conservatory, barely scraped 3 foot 8 inches in height (1.1 meters), but it was exceptional in other ways. "We may not have had the largest flower, but we [were] the longest lasting," said the conservatory's curator, Ernesto Sandoval. The UC-Davis bloom lasted over four days, while most others wither away in half that time.
"Fortuitous Free-for-All"
But corpse flowers are not only found in the wild and many have bloomed in recent years in botanical gardens worldwide from England to Arizona.
"'Fortuitous free-for-all' covers this project very nicely," said UC-Davis plant physiologist Terry Murphy, self-proclaimed "cheerleader and coordinator" of the project. "I learned about the impending bloom two weeks before it opened," said Murphy. "Because I thought this was an opportunity for some interesting science, I called around campus to see who might be interested."
Though the corpse flower's odor chemicals have been tested before, some speculation still exists as to which exact compounds are present. Sulfurous chemicals, also responsible for the smell of rotten eggs, are almost certainly present. In addition, the aptly named compounds cadaverene and putrescine—produced when flesh breaks down—are found in other flowers of the Aroid family and are likely to be synthesized by A. titanum too.
These compounds give the plant its horrendous allure, which smells "like something curled up in there and died, a week ago," said Ken Shackel, UC-Davis pomologist (fruit scientist). The scent comes out in waves, said Sandoval, reminiscent of rotting fish one minute and rotting pumpkin the next.
Shackel was enlisted to attach heat probes to the unfurling inflorescence. Though most plants are more or less at the mercy of the environment, a few such as the titan arum are able to generate heat. Theory suggests that "higher temperatures would cause their perfume to reach out to insects more effectively," said Shackel.
Ted's central spadix heated up starting around 11 p.m. on the first night, from room temperature (68 degrees F/20 degrees C) to around 90 degrees F (32 degrees C) and stayed at that temperature until 3 or 4 a.m., when it dropped back to room temperature again.
Corpse flowers attract nocturnal insects such as beetles and flies that usually lay eggs in rotting flesh. "I can only assume this is the plant version of a one-night stand," said Shackel.
Other researchers took imprints of the plant's surface to look for tiny openings that would allow the fragrance to escape, and tissue samples to study biochemistry.
Global Phenomena
Many recent U.S. blooms can be traced to the late medical doctor and arum expert James R. Symon, said Sandoval. Symon and colleagues collected fruits in the wild and distributed them to botanical gardens in 1993.
Other blooms worldwide can be sourced to Bonn, said Barthlott. The garden distributed many during the mid-1990s, after a successful fertilization using frozen pollen produced 450 ripe fruits. Bonn has cultivated blooms since the 1930s, many of which were lost in Second World War air raids.
Italian botanists first recorded A. titanum in 1878. The first captive bloom was cultivated in England's Royal Botanical Garden, Kew, near London in 1889, generating so much intrigue that police were called in for crowd control. Victorian-era scientists picked the Greek words: Amorpho meaning shapeless, phallus meaning penis, and titanum meaning huge, to christen the new species.
Since that time, Sumatra's wet forests have been degraded by development and pollution, but no one knows how many corpse flowers are left, said Sandoval. Indonesian experts do believe them to be endangered.
One thing is for sure though: such sustained interest in this unusual plant will ensure it continues to thrive in captivity. "About 2,000 people came to see the Davis plant over the course of that week," said Sandoval. "In a normal week we'd have 50 visitors." Bonn's flower attracted over 16,000 visitors in just three days.
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botany / botanic / botanical / botanist
putrefy
pollinate
stir up a buzz
fetid
odor = scent = fragrance
plethora
tuber
dormant
inflorescence
petal
inconspicuous
conservatory
pomology / pomologist
reminiscent of
enlist
at the mercy of
nocturnal
tissue
fertilization
thrive
captivity
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