Most flowers try to smell sweet. The titan arum goes the other way. When it finally blooms, it sends out a stench so foul that people compare it to rotting meat, and yet visitors happily wait in long lines to catch a whiff.
The smell is the whole point. The titan arum, better known as the corpse flower, depends on insects that normally feed on or lay their eggs in dead animals, such as carrion beetles and flesh flies. By smelling like a corpse, the bloom lures those insects in, and they carry pollen from flower to flower.
A Recipe for Stink
Scientists have analyzed the chemicals the bloom gives off, and the list reads like a horror-movie pantry. There's a compound that smells like Limburger cheese, one like garlic, one like rotting fish, and one like sweaty socks. There's even a chemical with a sweet floral scent, plus one that smells like feces.
The flower doesn't just let the smell drift. Its tall central spike heats itself up to about 99 degrees Fahrenheit, roughly human body temperature. That warmth helps the scent rise into the cooler air and travel. The stink can be detected up to half a mile away.
The timing is clever too. The smell builds from late evening to the middle of the night, right when carrion beetles and flesh flies are most active, then fades by morning. Even the bloom's deep red color and texture help sell the illusion that it's a piece of meat.
A Giant That Takes Its Time
The titan arum grows wild only in the rainforests of Sumatra, in Indonesia. Its flowering structure, technically called an inflorescence, can reach more than 10 feet tall. It's made of a tall spike wrapped in a frilly, bell-shaped sheath that's green outside and dark burgundy inside.
Most of the time, the plant doesn't look like a flower at all. It grows a single giant leaf, shaped like a small tree, that can reach about 15 feet tall. Energy from the leaf is stored in an underground tuber, the largest of any known flowering plant, which can weigh more than 200 pounds.
It can take ten years from seed before the plant blooms for the first time. After that, it might bloom every three to seven years. And when it does, the show is brief. The flowers last only 24 to 36 hours.
A Celebrity at the Greenhouse
The titan arum first bloomed in cultivation at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in England in 1889. Since then it has flowered at many botanic gardens, though it remains hard for home gardeners to grow.
Because blooms are so rare, they've become events. Flowerings can draw thousands of visitors, and these days thousands more watch on live streams, waiting for the big moment.
A Name Too Rude for TV
The plant's scientific name, Amorphophallus titanum, comes from Greek words meaning roughly a giant, misshapen phallus. When naturalist David Attenborough filmed The Private Life of Plants in 1995, that name was considered too rude for television. The friendlier name titan arum is said to have been coined then.
The common name corpse flower is a translation of its Indonesian name, bunga bangkai. So if a garden near you ever announces a bloom, go and see it. Just maybe take a deep breath before you get to the door.
