Corpse Flower Comes to Life

It's not every day that UC Berkeley botanists get excited about a flower emitting the stench of rotting flesh.

Officials at the UC Botanical Garden said they opened the door of the garden's Tropical House on Monday morning and were pleasantly surprised that the greenhouse smelled of a corpse.

Odora, one of the garden's titan arum plants that are commonly known as corpse flowers, blossomed for the first time on Sunday night, emitting the stench as a result.

"Before we even saw it, we knew it was in bloom," said Chris Carmichael, associate director of collections and horticulture at the garden.

The corpse flower, discovered in 1878 in Indonesia, is the largest flowering structure in the plant world and is commonly known for its foul odor. The plant uses the odor, which lasts between eight and 12 hours, to attract flies and beetles that help it to pollinate.

Odora's blossom is almost four-feet high and is the second of its batch to bloom in the garden. Odora's cousin, Titania, bloomed for the first time last year and has since been pollinated by botanists at the garden.

Typically, the plant must be six to seven years old before it is able to bloom, but Odora took 13 years to bloom for the first time, Carmichael said.

In its lifetime, the plant goes from looking like a small tree or occasionally a large blossom before it collapses and builds up energy for another life cycle, Carmichael said.

First-time garden visitor Leah Shimabuku, a dietitian with the Native American Health Center in Oakland, said she thought she was extremely lucky to have paid a visit to the garden on the day the flower bloomed.

"It just is completely serendipity," Shimabuku said.

-Angelica Dongallo

Tags: CORPSE FLOWER, ODORA, UC BOTANICAL GARDEN, TITAN ARUM