(Photo: Milwaukee Public Museum)
The Milwaukee Public Museum's titan arum flowered on January 15, 2010 after a month-long wait. Most of us will never get to see a blooming titan arum in person because they are endangered in the wild and are not all that common in cultivation. It takes several years for the plant to bloom and then the flower (one of the world's largest) only lasts for a short time. Â Â
"The titan arum is one of the wonders of the plant world because of its sheer size and rapid rate of growth," says Neil Luebke, curator of botany at the Milwaukee Public Museum.
Indeed, the museum's titan arum, which stands at 7 feet 8 ½ inches tall, grew several inches a day since the shoot emerged from the soil in mid-December. The plant expends so much energy growing so quickly that it can't sustain itself for long and usually only stays open for two days, according to Luebke.Â
Known as the world's tallest flower, the titan arum is technically the world's largest unbranched cluster of flowers. (The largest single flower is rafflesia arnoldii, which can grow up to 3 feet wide.) In the wild titan arums can grow to be over ten feet tall, but in cultivation the world record is 9.55 feet. A spokeswoman at the museum dubbed the exotic plant: the "Godzilla of the plant world."Â
A blooming titan arum usually draws large crowds because it's so rare, but also because of the foul odor it emits. It smells like rotting flesh or decaying meat, which is why it's also known as the "corpse plant." The smell is so intense that the human nose can detect it from over a half mile away.
The horrid smell attracts pollinators from afar. In nature the corpse plant only grows in the rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia. They are threatened because of rain forest destruction. The International Union of Conservation lists them as vulnerable.
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(Photo: Milwaukee Public Museum)
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