Corpse flower begins bloom

The university “corpse flower,” the rare plant native to Sumatra that is attracting thousands of visitors to a campus greenhouse, is beginning to blossom.

The blossoming is clearly visible to visitors, as shown on a live Web cam trained on the plant.

The greenhouse will be open 9 a.m.-6 p.m. on Friday through Sunday, June 8-10.

Also to better accommodate visitors, the entrance has been changed. The only entrance to the greenhouse will be through the garage at the rear of Birge Hall at the southeast corner of the building. Visitors will then be able to exit through the building after seeing the flower.

The titan arum or “corpse flower” is noted for a malodorous stench given off by blooms that can have a diameter of as much as four feet. The nascent bloom at UW–Madison, exceedingly rare among cultivated titan arum plants, is the first in Wisconsin and may be only the 12th recorded U.S. bloom.

The titan arum “flower” is actually a leafy structure called a spathe. Within, at the base of a fleshy central column called the spadix, are thousands of tiny male and female flowers. Only when the spathe is completely unfurled are the flowers mature.

Strictly speaking, it isn’t a “true” flower at all, but an “inflorescence,” or collection of flowers, which emerges at the end of a long dormant period, growing up to 4 inches a day over a period of about three weeks. As the pale yellow spike reaches maturity, the spathe opens out to form a vast, ribbed, frilly-edged trumpet, greenish on the outside but deep maroon within.

University botanist Paul Berry will have the improbable task of aiding the fertilization of a plant. Berry will be using donor pollen from a second titan arum that just finished flowering at Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Fla.

In its native equatorial rain forest, the titan arum depends on carrion beetles and sweat bees to carry pollen from one plant to another. The plant’s notorious odor, described as a cross between rotting flesh and burnt sugar, helps attract the insects that it depends on for reproduction.

The UW–Madison titan arum is less than eight years old and was grown from seed collected in Sumatra, Indonesia, on the same expedition where David Attenborough filmed the BBC series “The Secret Life of Plants.”

UW–Madison’s Birge Hall is on Bascom Hill, just south of Bascom Hall. The public may enter the building only through the front. Greenhouse No. 8 is accessible to people with disabilities. Wheelchairs are available.

No public parking is available on Bascom Hill. Nearby public parking includes the Grainger Hall garage outside the gated area (enter on Brooks Street), the lower level of the Lot 46 ramp (enter from Frances Street), Area 6 under Helen C. White Library on North Park Street, Lot 20 ramp on the north side of University Avenue between Charter Street and Randall Avenue, the Fluno Center ramp (enter from Frances Street), University Square (Lot 47) on West Johnson Street and the city’s Lake Street ramp.

The Amorphophallus Hot Line is (608) 262-2235.