Corpse Flower: One of the Weirdest Rainforest Plants

The corpse flower is the common name of Amorphophallus titanum, or titan arum, a giant plant that grows wild only in the rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia. Its flowering structure can stand around 3 metres tall, opens for roughly a day or two after years of growth, and smells of rotting meat to attract carrion insects.

Few plants draw queues at botanic gardens the way this one does. It is huge, unpredictable and briefly foul-smelling, and each of those traits has a purpose. This guide explains how it works, why it blooms so rarely, how it differs from Rafflesia, and why its future depends on the Sumatran forest.

What is the corpse flower?

Amorphophallus titanum belongs to the arum family (Araceae). It was brought to scientific attention by the Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari after he encountered it in western Sumatra in 1878, and you can check its accepted name and native range on Kew's Plants of the World Online. In Indonesia it is known as bunga bangkai, which translates as "corpse flower".

What looks like one enormous flower is in fact an inflorescence: a cluster of many small flowers on a single structure. It has two main parts:

• The spadix, the tall, pale central column that rises out of the middle.
• The spathe, a frilled sheath wrapped around the base of the spadix, green on the outside and a deep maroon on the inside when open.

The real flowers are tiny and hidden inside the spathe, in rings around the base of the spadix: female flowers below, male flowers above. Because these flowers sit on one unbranched stalk, the titan arum has the largest unbranched inflorescence of any known plant. (The talipot palm produces a larger flowering structure, but it is branched.)

Why does the corpse flower smell like rotting meat?

The smell is a pollination strategy. A plant that flowers rarely and briefly in dense rainforest needs to be found quickly, so the corpse flower mimics a dead animal, attracting carrion beetles and flesh flies that normally seek out carcasses to feed or lay eggs on. The scent includes sulphur-containing compounds such as dimethyl trisulfide, which is also given off by decaying flesh.

Three other features strengthen the illusion:

1. Heat. The spadix warms up during the bloom, to roughly human body temperature, which helps the smell rise and spread through the forest.
2. Colour. The maroon inner face of the spathe resembles raw meat.
3. Timing. The spathe usually opens in the late afternoon or evening, and the smell is typically strongest during the first night, when many carrion insects are active.

Insects that crawl down into the spathe reach the female flowers first. These are receptive before the male flowers on the same plant release pollen, usually about a day later. This makes self-pollination unlikely, so the plant depends on insects bringing pollen from another titan arum blooming at about the same time, a real constraint in the wild. If pollination succeeds, the base of the spadix develops into a cluster of red-orange fruits, which birds, including hornbills, are thought to eat and disperse.

How often does the corpse flower bloom?

Rarely, and never on a fixed timetable. The plant grows from a corm, an underground storage organ that can become very large; corms of more than 100 kilograms have been recorded in cultivation. The corm alternates between three phases:

• Leaf phase: a single umbrella-like leaf, several metres tall, feeds the corm for a year or more, then dies back.
• Dormancy: the corm rests for a few months.
• Flowering phase: only when the corm has stored enough energy does it send up an inflorescence instead of a leaf.

A plant grown from seed often takes seven to ten years to flower for the first time, and after that there are usually several years between blooms. The bloom itself is short: the spathe stays fully open for about 24 to 48 hours before it closes and collapses. The first recorded flowering in cultivation was at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in 1889, and blooms still make the news because gardens can only predict them a few days ahead.

Titan arum vs Rafflesia: which is the real corpse flower?

Both. "Corpse flower" is used for two unrelated Southeast Asian plants that both smell of decay and are both called bunga bangkai in Indonesia. The titan arum has the largest unbranched inflorescence; Rafflesia arnoldii has the largest single flower.

Both join a long list of odd rainforest plants, like the stilt-rooted palm in our article on the walking palm.

Is the corpse flower endangered?

Yes. The titan arum is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Its wild range is limited to Sumatra, where the main pressure is the loss and fragmentation of its forest habitat, including clearance for agriculture and plantations. A small, scattered wild population also makes cross-pollination harder.

Botanic gardens help by sharing pollen and seed between institutions. Many cultivated plants are thought to descend from a limited number of wild-collected individuals, so coordinated pollination is used to keep the cultivated population genetically diverse. These ex situ (off-site) collections are a backstop, not a replacement for intact forest where the plant, its pollinators and its seed dispersers live together.

It is worth being precise about where Evertreen fits. Through Evertreen, people and companies fund trees that local partners and farmers plant in named projects, including rainforest reforestation in Honduras and Brazil, and tree planting in Madagascar with the partner Tsiryparma, which also guards 8,021 hectares of eastern highland forest at Vohidahy. Planting follows the local season, so trees go into the ground in the months after funding, not instantly.

Separately, Evertreen acts as an intermediary for certified carbon credits from third-party projects under standards such as Verra, Gold Standard, American Carbon Registry and Plan Vivo, retired on public registries; Evertreen does not own or operate those projects, and this is a different product from tree planting.

Frequently asked questions

How big is the corpse flower?

A mature titan arum's inflorescence can stand around 3 metres tall, and some cultivated specimens have exceeded that. The underground corm that powers it can weigh more than 100 kilograms.

Is the corpse flower the largest flower in the world?

It depends on the definition. The titan arum has the largest unbranched inflorescence, a cluster of many small flowers. The largest single flower belongs to Rafflesia arnoldii, at around 1 metre across.

Is the corpse flower carnivorous?

No. It does not trap or digest insects. The beetles and flies it attracts are pollinators: they pick up pollen and, ideally, carry it to another blooming plant.

Where can you see a corpse flower bloom?

Many botanic gardens in Europe, North America and Asia grow titan arums. Because a bloom lasts only a day or two, gardens usually announce it a few days ahead online, and some stream it live.

To learn how rainforest reforestation is funded with local partners, explore Evertreen's forest restoration projects.