Amorphophallus Titanum:
People in Geelong city have beelined to witness an unusual event – the blooming of the Amorphophallus Titanum (called Titan Arum in short).
- Amorphophallus Titanum (called Titan Arum in short) blooms once in a decade and is one of the largest in the world — growing over 10 ft in height.
- It is also called Corpse Flower.
- It was first described by Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari in 1878.
- It blooms approximately once every decade, with each flowering lasting merely 24 to 48 hours.
- It mimics the stench of rotting flesh to attract its pollinators — carnivorous bees and flies that feed on corpses.
- The dark, red interior of the spathe that is exposed when it is fully open looks like the surface of a piece of uncooked meat, and the spadix in the centre even warms up to provide the perfect simulation of a warm, abandoned body.
- It looks peculiar, with a tall, crooked, pale yellowish phallic structure — the ‘spadix’ — rising from the centre of what looks like an upturned meat skirt — its dark red, thick, waxy ‘spathe’, which is the spiral, petal-like structure that holds within it the inflorescence.
- It blossoms on limestone hills in the rainforests of western Sumatra, Indonesia, where it is called bunga bangkai (bunga means flower and bangkai means corpse).
- Conservation status IUCN: Endangered
