We mentioned the imminent bloom of the Corpse Flower in Milwaukee Public Museum on the Aromamuse Facebook Page but we love David Attenboroughs The Private Life of Plants BBC TV Series, in which the flowering and pollination of the plant were filmed for the first time.

This clip shows David Attenborough’s visit to Sumatra, where it is native to the equatorial rainforests, to view the rare 3 day boom of the Amorphophallus titanum (from Ancient Greek amorphos, “without form, misshapen” + phallos, “penis”, and titan, “giant”) which occurs only once ever 3 years.  It’s a gargantuan flowering plant with the largest unbranched inflorescence  (cluster of flowers) in the world.

Due to it’s smell of “rotting fish”, the titan arum is also known as a carrion flower, the “Corpse flower”, or “Corpse plant”.  Although it smells “bad” to us, it’s a divine odor for the tiny sweat bees who are tasked with pollinating this species and who relish the opportunity to “bathe” in its splendour. According to B. Meeuse and S. Morris (The Sex Life of Flowers, 1984), the enormous blossom generates such an overwhelming smell that people have been known to pass out from taking too close a whiff.

Some references  state that the tubers of Amorphophallus titanum are the largest in the plant kingdom.  They may be 6 feet (2m) in diameter and weigh up to 120 pounds (54 kg).

This video shows shows the rapid growth and ‘flowering’ of the inflorescence of Titan arum (commonly known as the corpse plant) at the UC Botanical garden in Berkeley in June of 2009:

They may be some of the largest flowers in the world, but they are by no means the smelliest.  Similarly foul smelling carrion flowers belong to a variety of different and unrelated plant families, and include some of the largest and most bizarre flowers on earth…see Waynes Word for more info