Two of the largest corpse flowers on the continent flowered simultaneously this past weekend at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, drawing more than 7,000 visitors in a single day as word spread about the fleeting natural spectacle.
The titan arums, named Odorysseus and Odora, unfurled their towering blooms over the weekend and reached peak intensity overnight. Staff at the research facility announced the flowering Sunday afternoon, setting off a rush that continued into Monday. By late morning, advance tickets had sold out entirely.
Brandon Tam, curator of the Huntington's orchid collection, witnessed the phenomenon firsthand. Some visitors waited three hours in line just for a glimpse of the plants, though each bloom lasts only 24 to 48 hours. "People were curious, people were inspired," Tam said. "People started to fall in love with plants because of this poster child of a plant that has led people to better understand that plants have a life of their own."
The corpse flower earned its infamous name from the rotting-flesh odor it produces during its brief flowering window. That pungent smell serves a purpose: it attracts carrion beetles and flesh flies that pollinate the endangered plant. Native to western Sumatra in Indonesia, the titan arum is one of the world's most unusual botanical specimens.
Despite its singular common name, the corpse flower is not one bloom but a giant flowering structure made up of hundreds of tiny flowers clustered together. The structure can exceed 12 feet in height. Once flowering ends, the entire thing collapses and enters a dormant period that can stretch for years.
The Huntington has maintained an extensive collection of these plants for more than 25 years. The facility now cultivates more than 43 mature specimens, many descended from a single plant successfully pollinated in 2002. That successful pollination produced hundreds of fruits and seeds that propagated into new specimens.
"In 2002, we pollinated a corpse flower, which produced hundreds of fruits and therefore hundreds of seeds that we would propagate," Tam explained.
The seedlings from that breeding effort were distributed to botanical gardens across the United States as part of broader conservation efforts. Fewer than 1,000 titan arums are believed to exist in the wild, making the species critically endangered. Public displays like the one at the Huntington help preserve genetic diversity while introducing the broader population to one of nature's most remarkable and malodorous plants. The current display runs through early August.
Author James Rodriguez: "When two of the world's rarest plants flower at the same time and thousands show up to smell them, that's when you know public interest in conservation isn't dead."
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