The fascinating life cycle of the titan arum plant
Learn about the titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum), also known as a corpse flower: how it grows, attracts insects, and blooms.
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Transcript
TODD BRETHAUER: Good morning, I'm Todd Brethauer. I'm a volunteer here at the United States Botanic Garden where I do public science education. And this morning we're going to talk about one of the rock stars of the plant kingdom-- the titan arum.
It's big. It's exciting. It's exotic. It's rare. And most people only get a chance to see it once in their lifetime. And already this morning, we've got lines forming outside of the Botanic Garden to see it. And so I'd like to introduce the star of our show-- the titan arum.
It's also known by the common name the corpse flower, which is a direct translation of its name from the Indonesian language. Many languages have their own terms for the plant, but across the international language of science, it's known as amorphophallus titanium. The plant is native to Indonesia in the central section of a large island of Sumatra. So the plant is just under eight feet tall right now. And it's a little over six years old. For the last six years, the plant has been going through its vegetative or leafy stage, which is what you see here behind me.
That is a single large leaf that is photosynthesizing, producing sugars, storing them as starches, converting a portion of that to protein. And last night, about 7 o'clock at night, it started emitting its malodorous chemicals that it uses to attract its pollinating animals. Those pollinating animals are beetles and flies that lay their eggs in dead animals.
The most characteristic chemical associated with it is the chemical dimethyl trisulfide, which you can sort of describe as the smell of rotting onions or rotting cabbage. It also includes dimethyl disulfide in larger quantities, not quite as odoriferous for humans. It also includes trimethylamine, which is the essence of rotting fish. And to finish it off it includes isovaleric acid, which is essentially the smell of old sweat socks.
That large telephone pole structure that you see there that we call the spadix started to emit heat-- we call that thermogenesis. So that's a big photosynthetic machine that is producing all of the resources that allows the plant to produce that large inflorescence.
It's big. It's exciting. It's exotic. It's rare. And most people only get a chance to see it once in their lifetime. And already this morning, we've got lines forming outside of the Botanic Garden to see it. And so I'd like to introduce the star of our show-- the titan arum.
It's also known by the common name the corpse flower, which is a direct translation of its name from the Indonesian language. Many languages have their own terms for the plant, but across the international language of science, it's known as amorphophallus titanium. The plant is native to Indonesia in the central section of a large island of Sumatra. So the plant is just under eight feet tall right now. And it's a little over six years old. For the last six years, the plant has been going through its vegetative or leafy stage, which is what you see here behind me.
That is a single large leaf that is photosynthesizing, producing sugars, storing them as starches, converting a portion of that to protein. And last night, about 7 o'clock at night, it started emitting its malodorous chemicals that it uses to attract its pollinating animals. Those pollinating animals are beetles and flies that lay their eggs in dead animals.
The most characteristic chemical associated with it is the chemical dimethyl trisulfide, which you can sort of describe as the smell of rotting onions or rotting cabbage. It also includes dimethyl disulfide in larger quantities, not quite as odoriferous for humans. It also includes trimethylamine, which is the essence of rotting fish. And to finish it off it includes isovaleric acid, which is essentially the smell of old sweat socks.
That large telephone pole structure that you see there that we call the spadix started to emit heat-- we call that thermogenesis. So that's a big photosynthetic machine that is producing all of the resources that allows the plant to produce that large inflorescence.