BARUCH COLLEGE–When a line of people are waiting around in Brooklyn, most people would assume they’re waiting for a concert. Instead, crowds flocked to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden eager to witness, but more importantly smell, the garden’s briefly blooming “corpse flower.”
Amorphophallus gigas is a close relative to the well-known—and more popular—”corpse flower,” Amorphophallus titanum. Both plants are native to Sumatra, Indonesia, and release similar carrion scents. The smell attracts pollinators looking for carcasses to lay eggs, and it is so convincing that first-day visitors equate the scent to a “dead rat.”
The structure of the plants’ bloom is unusual as well. Unlike a traditional flower, gigas and titanum bloom as an inflorescence, a cluster of smaller flowers arranged as a Florette. It takes several years before the plants have enough energy to emerge above the soil. Once they bloom, they can only sustain themselves for a few days before wilting and beginning to store energy all over again.
The smell also begins to change over time, with the consensus shifting from “dead animal” to “stinky cheese” as the three days went on.
