About Titan Arum
MPM’s Titan Arum
Corpse Flower
(Amorphophallus titanum)
What is a titan arum?
The titan arum is in the arum family, Araceae. It is related to such native Wisconsin plants as Skunk Cabbage, Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Wild Calla. Ornamental relatives include Peace Lily, Philodendron, Anthurium and Dieffenbachia.
Where do titan arums grow in nature?
Titans occur only in the equatorial rain forest on the Indonesian Island of Sumatra. Because of rain forest destruction, they are threatened and are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
How did the titan arum get its name?
Titan arum is the name given to the plant by David Attenborough in 1993 for the BBC program The Private Life of Plants. Indonesians know it by the name Bunga Bangkai (Corpse Flower), alluding to the smell of the flower. Another name is krubi.
When does the titan arum flower?
A titan from seed takes 6 or more years to flower. Each year it sends up a single giant leaf that can reach 20 ft tall. The leaf produces food that is stored in a huge tuber underground. These tubers can weigh more than 150 lbs for a mature plant. A leaf lasts about a year to 18 months. When it dies, the plant remains dormant for a period of 3 months to a year. Then, if the plant is mature, it produces a flower. Over the plant’s 40+ year lifespan, it will produce several more flowers.
Whether a new shoot will be a leaf or a flower can’t be known until the new growth emerges from the protective sheath. This usually occurs when the shoot is about 2 feet tall. The growth rate of the flower ranges from 3 – 6 inches a day. Flower opening can be predicted by the slowing of the growth.
Is the flower of the titan arum really the biggest in the world?
The flower is technically the world’s largest unbranched cluster of flowers or inflorescence. [Largest single flower (also known as Corpse Flower, is the parasitic Raffelesia arnoldii, 3 ft across, (Borneo & Sumatra); largest branched inflorescence is Talipot palm, Corypha umbraculifera, 20-30 feet high, (Sri Lanka & S. India)]. It can attain a height of 10 feet or more and spread of 3-4 feet, although in cultivation the height averages about 5 feet. It consists of an outer petal-like structure called a spathe. The spathe resembles an upside down bell with a frilly edge. The column arising above the spathe is the spadix. The bottom of the spadix has the female flowers and above them, the male flowers. The female flowers are receptive only on the first day after the flower opens. The male flowers shed pollen on the second day. Hence, the flower cannot pollinate itself. The rest of the spadix produces the distinctive odor of rotting flesh. The entire flower last for about 2 days before collapsing.
Why does the flower smell so bad?
Flower odor is strongest the first night after opening. Sulfur compounds, similar to those responsible for the smell of rotten eggs, give the flower its putrid odor. The smell (similar to rotting fish according to some) comes in waves and attracts carrion beetles and sweat bees in its native habitat. Since flowers are few and far between in the wild, the plant needs to disperse its odor to attract pollinators. It is able to do this by generating heat, up to about 10 °F above the surrounding air, which volatilizes the chemicals. The spathe closes after this first period trapping the pollinators within. When it opens the next day, the male flowers are shedding their pollen and the insects must crawl over the flowers picking up pollen on their way out. If fertilization occurs, numerous fruit the size of olives will develop over the next 6 months, turning bright red when ripe.
How did the museum get its titan arum?
MPM’s plant was given to museum botanists during Botany 2002 conference in Madison, Wisconsin. The seedling was from seeds planted in March of 2002 that were the product of a successful pollination of UW-Madison’s titan, “Big Bucky” which flowered in June, 2001. Pollen was from Marie Selby’s Botanical Garden’s (Sarasota, Florida) titan “Mr. Magnificent”.
The 3 other plants in the vivarium, are offsets from the original plant. An offset results from the tuber producing another bud which eventually develops into a separate plant.
Madison’s plant was grown from seed that was collected in 1993 during the filming of Attenborough’s The Private Life of Plants by Dr. James Symon and Wilbert Hetterscheid. They provided seed to researchers wanting to learn more about the life cycle of these endangered plants. Because of this dispersal of seed, titans have become more common in cultivation.
Are there other titan arums in cultivation?
Titan arums were first discovered by Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari in 1878. He sent seeds to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew where in 1889, the first cultivated plant bloomed.
The first titan bloom in the United States occurred at the New York Botanical Gardens in 1937. In 1939 this flower was designated the official flower of the Bronx (replaced in 2000 by the day lily). Where ever it has bloomed, it has attracted large crowds. A 1999 blooming at the Huntington Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California attracted 76,000 people over the 19 days the plant was on display.
What is the largest documented titan arum flower in cultivation?
There have been about 140 documented blooms worldwide. The record for largest bloom went to a plant at the Bonn University’s Botanical Gardens, Bonn, Germany that measured 274 cm (9 feet) in 2003. The tuber for this plant weighed 176 pounds at the time.
On 20 October 2005, this record was broken at the botanical and zoological garden Wilhelma in Stuttgart, Germany. The bloom reached a height of 2.91 m (9.55 feet).