27 Corpse Flower Facts: Is It The Rarest Flowering Formation?

The Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari was the first person who described the corpse flower and its rotting flesh.

He was the one who successfully found the rotting flesh and corpse flower while exploring the tropical rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia. The plant can grow 10 ft (3 m) in height and 5 ft (1.5 m) in diameter.

Beccari took some of the seeds of the corpse flower plant so that research could be done on them in Kew Botanical Gardens in London. In 1889, the first flower of the plant bloomed, thus creating a history in the world for species of this kind in the plant kingdom.

In 1926, the second bloom of the flower was observed.

The scientific name of the flower is Amorphophallus titanum, also referred to as titan arum, which belongs to the family of Araceae. This botanical garden plant species have an inflorescence that is unbranched and the largest in the world.

It is endemic to western parts of Sumatra, Indonesia. The corpse flower cannot be a decorative flower due to its stinky smell and is thus only found in botanic gardens.

Many times, the corpse flower, titan arum, is considered similar to the carrion flower in its characteristics.

The corpse plant, or corpse flower, is known to absorb water in large quantities, because of which it is not advisable to grow this plant in a house garden, also considering its huge size and smell. The corpse flower plant blooms once a while in two to seven years and due to this reason, this plant is rare.

The Corpse Flower Smell

Titan arum is known to produce a strange, weird smell when its flowers bloom. The smell is to lure and attract the pollinators.

The smell of the corpse plants is similar to that of rotting meat, garlic, and cheese. Some of the time, the smell is also referred to as the smell of sweat as it has the same temperature as a human body. The chemicals produced by spadix are indole, phenol, benzyl alcohol, dimethyl disulfide, trimethylamine, isovaleric acid, and dimethyl trisulfide.

The smell of the flower is stronger during the night when the pollinators like carrion beetles, flesh flies, and dung beetles are flying around. The spadix recorded temperature was 98.6 F (37 C).

The sulfur odor compound, dimethyl trisulfide, is also known to be produced by many vegetables. This attracts some insects that frequently deposit their eggs on the bodies of animals that have died.

They think it's a pleasant location to rest because of the smell of the flowers.

The insects fly, smeared in corpse flower pollen after they understand that it is not really a dead animal. The flies may migrate to some other susceptible corpse flower if they feel like it, and in this way, self-pollination occurs with a weird smell like rotting meat.

Description Of Corpse Flower

The corpse flower is an inflorescence flower that is known to grow up to a height of 10 ft (3 m) or more and has a rotten egg or rotten meat-like smell.

The corpse flower has a spadix which is covered by a spathe, which generally appears to be a large petal. The color of the corpse flower's spathe is dark green from the outside, while from the inside, the color of the spathe is dark maroon red.

The spadix of the flower is almost empty and looks like a huge baguette of bread in France.

The base of the spadix, the inside tissue lining of the spathe, is visible and has two small flowers in the form of rings. The human body and spadix temperature are almost similar to each other.

This heat produces a sticky smell so that the pollinators, like dung beetles, can be attracted to pollination. The male and female flowers are found in one inflorescence.

The male flowers of titan arum plants are known to bloom two to three days after the female flowers bloom. In this way, the self-pollination process is being observed in the titan arum or corpse plants.

The flower's leaves are huge and green in color which grows from the corm once the flower rots. The leaves of the corpse flower, as grown in botanical gardens, are known to reach a height of 20 ft (6 m) with a diameter of 16 ft (5 m).

Annually, a new leaf grows as the older one dies. Many small leaflets are found along the stalk and have white spots.

The corm of the corpse flower is known to weigh around 110 lb (50 kg). In the botanical garden of Kew, the weight of the corm was 201 lb (91 kg). Around 30 chemicals are produced by corpse flowers during pollinating and blooming time.

Farming Of Corpse Flower

The corpse flower, titan arum, which is generally found in the natural range of wild forests, is also cultivated in the botanic garden due to its unique features.

The corpse flower is a native species of plant from the equatorial rainforests, which are found in Sumatra, Indonesia. In 1878 Odoardo Beccari, an Italian botanist, described the corpse flower in bloom. The corpse flower's single flower appears single but has many huge flowers and was first cultivated in London in 1889 in Kew at Royal Botanic Gardens.

From that very time period, over 100 corpse flowers have been known to be grown in London for scientific study. In America, in the years 1937 and 1939, the New York Botanical Garden was also spotted flowering corpse flowers.

The corpse flower was the official flower of the Bronx in 1939, but by 2000, the corpse flower was replaced by the day lily.

Since 1932, the botanic garden of Bonn has been known to cultivate the corpse flower. Wilhelm Barthlott is known to have cultivated 30 corpse flowers together and was doing research on them. The number of plants has increased since then, and every year at least four to five flowering plant species of corpse flowers can be seen.

Roseville High School, Roseville, California, is known to be the world's first high school to be successful in corpse flower blooms in 2011. The University of Bonn, Germany, is known to have grown the tallest corpse flower in 2003, with a height of 10.5 ft (3.2 m).

In New Hampshire, the largest corpse flower was grown by Louis Ricciardiello, which measured around 10.2 ft (3.1 m) in 2010.

Corpse flowers are known to bloom after 5–10 years of care. The corpse flower's pollinators are flesh flies, carrion beetles, and dung beetles.

The corpse flowers bloom at a time interval of two to seven or even nine or ten years, depending upon the mature fruit and each new leaf of the plant. Calla lilies are known to be plant species of the same family as corpse flowers.

Decorative Use Of The Corpse Flower

The corpse flower is among the category of the world's largest flowers in the plant kingdom. Mostly, the corpse flower is kept in the botanic garden due to its huge size and stinky smell.

The corpse flower, also known by the name of the death flower, is listed in the category of Vulnerable flowers due to poachers. Human activities have led to the loss of this unique plant from its natural habitat in countries where it is prominently found, such as Sumatra.

The tropical rainforests of Indonesia have seen a sudden decline in many plant species, listing them in the category of Endangered plants.

The huge size of the corpse flower does not make it suitable for the house environment and it is not a house plant. This stinky plant with an unpleasant odor would make it difficult to grow in the house garden and thus is usually seen in botanic gardens and universities.

The name of the flower has also been named after one of its properties of odor.

The smell of the flower is so strong, like rotting meat or rotten eggs, that using it for decoration would not be an appropriate idea. These smelly plant species are known to heat up and produce a rotten egg or rotting meat-like smell.

The scent of the corpse flower is used to attract the pollinators. This strange plant floral structure at once might attract the person from far away but coming within the natural fruit range

Main image by Rhododendrites