On May 26, the University of Missouri-St. Louis posted a news release that an extremely rare flower, Titan Arum, was expected to bloom at UM-St. Louis soon. The unique flower has not bloomed for eight years and only blooms for 12-20 hours before dying again. In fact, the Titan Arum has bloomed less than 100 times in the United States and only a few times in the Midwest.
The Titan Arum is often nicknamed the "corpse flower" because of the rotting meat odor that the flower gives off once in bloom. The rotting meat odor helps to attract carrion beetles, the pollinators of the plant. Although referred to as a flower, the corpse flower is actually an unbranched inflorescence, and holds the record for the largest unbranched inflorescence.
The Titan Arum is native to Sumatra, a western Indonesian island. The Titan Arum came to UM-St. Louis in 1995 from plant collector, Jim Symon. Kathy Upton, research specialist and greenhouse manager at UM-St. Louis has been cultivating the plant since. The original seed batch that Upton received has produced three plants, the third being the Titan Arum that just bloomed. This particular Titan Arum has been nicknamed "Jim the Triton Titan", honoring both the late collector and the mascot of UM-St. Louis.
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