- It's related to the dead horse arum
but it's nine feet tall
and three feet across.
It's amorphophallus titanum,
the titan arum.
- Ah, nature.
- Nothing like coming across a flower
that smells like a hunk of rotting mat.
(upbeat music)
- [Female] Imagine the year is 1878
and you're an Italian botanist
named Odoardo Beccari,
roaming the rainforest of Sumatra
when you get a whiff
of what you think might be
the corpse of a dead monkey.
You follow your nose only to discover
the source of what smells
like Satan's outhouse
is actually a flower.
- [Male] And it's not
just an olfactory stunner,
it's also quite a vision to behold.
At almost eight feet tall,
a pale yellow stalk called a spadix
rises out of scarlet maroon-colored leaves
blooming like a rainforest ballgown.
- [Female] Its Indonesian
name is bunga bangkai
which translates into corpse flower.
The plant's scientific name
is amorphophallus titanum,
Latin for well, giant misshapen penis
but we'll just call it
titan arum for short.
- [Male] Titan arum is such a large plant
that it can take a year or more
for it to store enough energy to bloom
which lasts just a few days
and because titan arum plants
are located so far apart from one another
and bloom so infrequently,
they need to attract as much
insect attention as possible
to ensure pollination.
Hence the concentrated stench
radiating from its nearly
eight foot tall beacon
calling all insects
within a half mile radius.
- [Female] Botanists theorize
that the plants fleshy pink color
and unusually warm temperature
about the same as the human body
help complete the illusion
that the plant is a giant
hunk of decaying meat
for insects to lay their eggs in.
By crawling all over the plant,
these insects play an important role
in pollinating the corpse flower.
- [Male] Although the titan
arum looks like a flower,
it's technically an inflorescence,
a group of flowers clustered
around a central stem,
the spadix,
and surrounded by a leafy
structure called the spathe.
- [Female] Plants masquerading
as decomposing meat
fall under the category
of carrion flowers.
So in addition to smelling the part,
some plants also look the part.
Take the stapellia asterias flower
which is coated with fine hairs
that make the flower resemble
a blood sausage, yum,
or the rafflesia arnoldi,
the world's largest flower
that has a modeled salami-like appearance.
- So the next time
you leave your half eaten
meal on the picnic table
and discover that elegant equation
of hot sun plus hunks of
beef equals fly infestation,
think of our friend the mighty titan arum.
So what about you guys?
Have you ever taken a
whiff of a corpse flower?
- Uh, let us know in the comments below
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