1 week Ago By Laura Baisas
Today, it’s not a that’s growing in Brooklyn. Instead, the petals of a rare type of have officially . The putrid smelling is related to the more common .
might be a little less dramatic in appearance than its relative, but its flower head–or inflorescence–can be even taller and produce the same . “It is not as large as an Amorphophallus titanum bloom, but its uniquely tall inflorescence is a significantly more rare occurrence,” Brooklyn Botanic Garden gardener Chris Sprindis . , only nine other botanic gardens have an in their collections.
The plant arrived in Brooklyn from Malaysia in 2018 and this is the first time it is blooming, but it will not last long. Across the globe in Australia, a has been blooming for the past week at the Royal Sydney Botanic Garden. This is the first time in 15 years that one of these flowers has bloomed in Sydney and Here are some things to know about these uniquely odorous flora.
Corpse flowers smell bad as a way to attract pollinators that are drawn to the . Think flies buzzing over an animal carcass. Attracting pollinators is essential for any plant’s survival, so they often use their flowers as reproductive tools.
, “Expecting a tasty rotten treat, these insects flock to the smell/ The non-flyers crawl into the flower and are temporarily trapped by steep walls and slippery ridges. As they skitter around the bottom of the flower, pollen falls onto them from the upper portion of the flower. Luckily for the bugs, the blooms are very short-lived, collapsing after only a few days and releasing the insects to carry their load of pollen on to the next smelly destination.
” Several contribute to this smell. Sufides are the key odorant. Dimethyl trisulfide gives the flower its rotting animal-like sulfury odor.
Dimethyl disulfide is a lesser, but still present smell like garlic. Additionally, a chemical found in sweaty feet called isovaleric acid and compound that smells like a mix of garlic and cheese called methyl thiolacetate are also present. The last scent to hit your nose before the flowering structure collapses after a few days is trimethylamine.
This compound smells like . has the largest known unbranched inflorescence in the plant kingdom. The bloom can grow up to eight feet tall, with some individual plants reaching heights of .
Generally, corpse flowers can take about . Some will only bloom once every few decades. They also do not have an annual blooming cycle like many other plants, and will only bloom when it has enough energy to do so.
The corpse flower –called a corm–that weighs about 100 pounds. Corpse flowers have the . If it is a non-flowering year, one leaf about the size of a small tree will shoot from the corm.
The leaf will then branch out into three sections, with each part growing more leaflets. After several years, the plant will finally gather enough energy needed to bloom. The bloom can then only be held for about 24 to 36 hours before collapsing.
Like in botanical gardens, corpse flowers are rare in nature as well. They are a tropical plant found in the equatorial rainforests of Sumatra, in Indonesia. Indonesians call it .
is by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Some botanists estimate that there are . The IUCN also estimates that the population has decreased by more than half over the past 150 years.
Logging and turning the plant’s habitat into land for palm oil plantations are believed to be the . , each corpse flower can produce over 400 fruits with two seeds. The fruits will go from a gold color to a rich crimson.
They are fully ripe about six months after pollination. However, don’t eat them. Their fruit is .
Large, orange-beaked birds called the typically eat the fruit and disperse the seeds..
