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The sickly curious will soon flock to Encinitas, hoping to catch a glimpse of an soon-to-be-blooming Amorphophallus titanum.
The so-called “corpse flower,” named after the pungent stench it emits when it blooms, is expected to appear in the San Diego Botanical Gardens in North County later this month. This world famous, extremely rare specimen has not yet flowered, but it is getting bigger every day.
The cadaver flower stalk can reach up to 12 feet in the wild and opens to reveal “two flower rings along the spadix. The spathe and spadix wither within a few days of flowering,” according to a press release from the SDBG. We also have no idea what a spadix is (“an inflorescence consisting of a thorn with a fleshy or thickened axis that is usually enclosed in a spathe,” says disctionary.com). Or a spathe (“a large bract that encloses the flower cluster of certain plants, especially the spadix of arum and palm trees”, according to Oxford Languages). So yeah, that doesn’t help.
After all this work – “it takes most plants seven to 10 years to produce their first flowers and then only bloom every four to five years”, according to the Botanical Garden – flowering only takes 48 hours after the first one Time has appeared.
“The corpse flower is the rock star diva of the plant world,” said Ari Novy, President and CEO of SDBG, in a press release published this week. “We never know exactly when she’s going to perform, but when she does it’s the most amazing show in all of horticulture. We can’t wait to see what this corpse flower will do. “
The endangered plant comes from the Indonesian island of Sumatra; According to the SDBC, there are fewer than 1,000 plants in the wild.
Incredibly, the peak is increasing six inches a day, officials said. Do you want to monitor it from your home? There is a live stream here. Looks like there’s plenty of time to go to North County – in our eyes the spike appears to be only a few feet high at this point.
You may be wondering: why so repulsive, corpse flower?
It’s very simple, according to the garden’s botanists: “The flower’s rancid carrion scent … attracts the carcass-eating insects that pollinate it.” So big.
Fun fact: The people at SDBG gave their plant an October-perfect name: Jack Smellington. An adult ticket to visit the whole garden, not just the corpse flower, is $ 18.
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