The Environmental Journal of Southern Appalachia

Displaying items by tag: spathe

A live video stream was featured at the top of this article while “Rotty Top” was blooming, July 29-31, 2021.
Another article includes details about that particular plant and the event.

The corpse plant at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville has not bloomed in 20 years

The titan arum (Amorphophalus titanum), native to Sumatra, is remarkable for several reasons.

It is more often referred to by colloquial names, such as corpse flower, rotting corpse plant or carrion plant, because of the strong distinct odor it releases to attract pollinators when it flowers.

No other species of flowering plant has an unbranched inflorescence, or flower-bearing reproductive part, as large as titan arum. Unbranched means that all flowers grow from a single stem; a gigantic one in this case. A record height above corm (underground storage tuber) of 10.5 ft was measured at Bonn Botanical Gardens in June 21, 2013. 

Published in Creature Features