Corpse-flower viewing and private orientation
This is the giant “corpse flower” in bloom at Bloedel Conservatory in Vancouver, an extremely rare display of the largest, stinkiest flower on Earth, which uses the smell of rotting flesh to attract pollinators, as one does…
Amorphophallus titanumin bloom at Bloedel Conservatory in Vancouver.
The notorious stench was missing for our viewing/smelling — apparently it comes in waves? — but at least we did get to see it unfurled.
Wife and I were super lucky and got to skip the ginormous queue, let in the back door with some city employees she knows, and then we all got a substantial private orientation from a conservatory gardener. Some things learned…
- This is a small corpse flower, so small they weren’t sure it would ever bloom. But the bulb was TWENTY-FIVE POUNDS. Now that’s a flower bulb.
- The marketing for this was a huge leap of faith because they didn’t know if it would actually bloom, right up until it did! Sometimes “life finds a way” only when the conditions are perfect. And those conditions…
- The hot and steamy conservatory, built for tropical plants, is not hot enough for this plant — it comes from Borneo — and it was largely incubated in a far warmer nursery at ~35˚C.
- It was moved from nursery to conservatory in an enormous crate, completely encased in packing peanuts!
A portion of the ginormous lineup at Bloedel Conservatory…
And this is what the mighty flower looked like when we visited the day before…
