Meet Ted! The Titan Arum "Corpse Flower" at UC Davis

Meet Ted! Ted is a Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum), otherwise known as the "corpse flower". He just started blooming today at the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory and we were lucky enough to see him before the smell of rotting flesh took over the greenhouse.
What do you think? Should this be our Christmas card photo? haha...


The Titan Arums are found on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. This particular plant is from seed acquired by UC Davis in 1995.

Once blooming, the Titan Arum puts off this smell of rotting flesh to attract flies and beetles to help with pollination. We got to the greenhouse fairly early so the smell wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I hear later tonight it will be extra stinky! It appeared to be "spraying" its stink every 3 minutes or so while we were there, but I imagine right about now it should be spraying pretty regularly.

The picture above may look like a tree, but it's considered to be a single leaf. This particular Titan Arum should be blooming next year. I believe this is "Tabitha the Titan"? Titan Arums can take about 15 years to bloom for the first time, but then will get into a bloom cycle of every 2-5 years. The inflorescence of Ted will die back to a corm (?) and one of the leaves pictured above will appear. Eventually the leaf will turn yellow and die back, and the plant will go dormant, until its next bloom cycle occurs. Each "flower" can produce a couple hundred seeds.

Pictured above snapping pictures is Ernesto! He was awesome! It is so fun to meet someone that is super excited about plants and clearly passionate about the work that he is doing at the conservatory. Seeing this place almost made me want to go back to school. Almost. Since that probably won't happen, I will probably sign up for one of their tours instead because this place was plant heaven!

It was fun to sit back and watch the different visitors that came. We got to meet a nice man that was actually from Indonesia, who said that when he lived there as a kid, the villagers didn't seem to value these plants.

Despite the stench, they are gorgeous. Some of the ladies were commenting on how they'd WEAR the bloom because it reminded them of a silk skirt. The petal part of this plant is actually called a spathe. And the inside- the crinkly fuzzy loaf of bread as my daughter called it- that is called a spadix. It looked as if it was covered in velvet. Below the spadix, in a section that we can't really see, are several hundred little male and female flowers.

If you get the chance tomorrow, the "petal" will be much more open, and the smell will be dying down. This bloom process lasts about 48 hours, then you have to wait a few years for the process to occur again. Thank you to the UCD Botanical Conservatory, and all of the staff that is donating their time over the next two days so that the public can participate in this rare event. You can visit their site to get information on the visitation hours for Ted. Admission is free to visit Ted, but please consider donating to the conservatory! Or as Ernesto said "When you get rich, remember us when you die." The Titum Aruns also have their own Facebook page because they are THAT cool. You can find their FB page here.