This is a good reason why plants give off a strong smell. "It all comes down to science," said Tim Pollack, an outdoor florist at Chicago Botanical Garden. The smell, color and even temperature of corpse flowers are all designed to attract pollinators and help ensure the continuation of species.
Pollak explained that dung beetles, flesh flies and other carnivorous insects are the main pollinators of this kind of flowers. These insects usually eat dead meat. The smell and dark purple color of dead flowers are to imitate dead animals to attract these insects.
"Dead flowers can also be heated to 98 degrees Fahrenheit (36.7 degrees Celsius) to further fool insects," Pollak told Life Science. Insects thought flowers might be food, flew in, realized there was nothing to eat, and then flew out with pollen on their legs. This process ensures the continuous pollination of this species. Once bloom flowers are pollinated, the flowers will wither.
Pollack wrote on the blog of Chicago Botanical Garden that the analysis shows that chemically speaking, this odor includes:
Dimethyl trisulfide (also emitted by cooked onions and Limburg cheese) Dimethyl disulfide (smells like garlic) Trimethylamine (found in rotten fish or ammonia) Isovaleric acid (also stinks sweaty socks) Benzyl alcohol (a sweet floral fragrance found in jasmine and hyacinthus orientalis) Phenol (sweet and medicinal, as in a sterile throat spray) Indole (like a moth ball)-sized corpse flower is called inflorescence-a stem with many flowers. A mixture of male and female florets grows at the bottom of spadix, which is a central structure similar to * * *, surrounded by spathe, which is a pleated skirt covering with bright green outside and dark chestnut inside when opened. If pollinated, spades will grow into a huge rod-shaped orange-red seed head.
Timm Sharp, the reference editor of life science, responded to the corpse flower he met in gustavus Adolf College in 20 10. (Photo courtesy of Tim Sharp) The plant itself grows to about 10 to 15 feet (3 to 4.6 meters). These plants can usually grow to 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall and their leaves can grow to 13 feet (4 meters) wide. According to Guinness World Records, the tallest flower is a corpse flower, with a height of10ft 2.25 inches (3. 1 m). It bloomed on the Winnipeg Orchid in guildford, New Hampshire on June 20 10/8.
The scientific name of corpse flower is Titan Amorphophallus. Ross Koning, a biology professor at Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU), said that according to Gustavus Adolphus College, the name comes from the Latin words amorphos (invisible, deformed), phallos( ***) and Titan (giant).
The corpse plant is also called Titan arum. According to the Botanical Garden of Canterbury University, David Attenborough, a British nudist and TV producer, first used the name titan arum in the BBC series the Private Lifes of Plants because he thought the audience might be offended by the Latin names of plants. Necrophilia is a subfamily of flowering plants. The kinship includes duckweed, skunk cabbage, calla lily and jack.
ECSU has two genotypes (individuals with different genotypes). Our genotype is called Rhea locally, and it has blossomed many times since 2008. Rhubarb has a larger inflorescence and a stronger smell than our other genotypes, and it is called Hyperion locally.
The journey of flowers According to Eden project, the flowering period of corpse flowers is as long as seven years; Some dead flowers bloom only once every few decades. The energy of plants is stored in bulbs, which expand and usually weigh about 100 pounds (45 kilograms). The corpse factory has the largest known bulb in the world, sometimes weighing 220 pounds (100 kg). In the years when there is no flowering, a leaf grows from the bulb, the size of which is like a small tree. This leaf is divided into three parts, and each part grows more leaflets. Every year, this leaf will die, and a new leaf will grow in its place. Many years later, the plant finally gathered enough energy to bloom. Once it blooms, it can only keep flowering for 24 to 36 hours, and then it collapses.
Because bloom has been here for a few days, it gives off its smell, which is a very exciting event for scientists and botanists. These flowers attracted media reports and a large number of tourists. The flowers that bloomed in Denver Botanical Garden in 20 14 were watched all over the world because a real-time message was posted on the garden's website. August 20 16, about 20,000 people lined up at Chicago Botanical Garden to watch a dead flower in full bloom.
Once the energy stored for blooming begins to bloom, it is divided into two stages in continuous nights: basically a "female" stage and a "male" stage. The female flower forms a ring at the bottom of spadix (inner tube structure), and the male flower forms a ring around spadix directly above the female flower.
In the first stage, carrion beetles, attracted by the stench of death and the temperature of human body, crawl in vase-like structures and unconsciously deposit pollen on acceptable female flowers. In the second stage, the structure began to collapse, the "fragrance" disappeared, and insects began to emerge. When leaving, the beetle rubbed against the pollen in the male flower, and now it is ready to bring the pollen to the nearby female flower.
Conservation Status The Italian botanist Oddo Becarie first discovered the corpse flower in Sumatra in 1878. This plant only grows in tropical Asia. This dead flower is listed as "vulnerable" in the Red List of Endangered Plants of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). However, if the factors threatening its survival and reproduction are not improved, this flower may be endangered. Its main threat is habitat loss and destruction. So far, Sumatra rainforest is facing a serious threat of deforestation, because a large area has been cut down to obtain wood and make room for palm plantations. In fact, it is estimated that about 72% of the original rainforest in Indonesia has been cleared, and the scale of deforestation continues at an alarming rate.
Additional reporting by field science writer Traci Pedersen.