Something smelly a lure in Bogor<\/p>\n
Peter Janssen, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Bogor<\/p>\n
When a Bunga Bangkai (corpse flower) blooms at the Bogor
\nBotanical Garden, 40 kilometers south of Jakarta, it attracts
\nmore than just flies, carrion beetles and sweat bees.<\/p>\n
Last August, one of the garden's 10 usually dormant tubers
\npushed up a flower that reached a height of 295 centimeters with
\npetals as wide as one meter.<\/p>\n
The pungent blossom, which could be smelled at a distance of
\n100 meters, attracted more than 20,000 visitors to Bogor
\nBotanical Gardens, including Indonesian President Megawati
\nSoekarnoputri, said Jusuf Ismail, a guide.<\/p>\n
The bloomings are a rare event, occurring about once every
\nthree years at Bogor and a handful of other botanical gardens
\naround the world, such as in Sydney and Bonn, that are fortunate
\nenough to own specimens of the giant tuber plant, which is
\nendemic only to Sumatra, Indonesia's giant northern island.<\/p>\n
The tuber, which goes by the Latin name Amorphophallus titanum
\n(or giant shapeless phallus), was first discovered in the jungles
\nof Sumatra by Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari in 1878.<\/p>\n
Believed to be the largest flower in the world, the tallest
\nrecorded fully erect flower reached a whopping 3.5 meters.<\/p>\n
Beccari sent seeds of the plant to the Royal Botanic Garden
\nKew where the first blossoming of the species in culture occurred
\nin 1889.<\/p>\n
There have been only 11 recorded bloomings of the plant in the
\nU.S., according to The Huntington Library, Art Collection &
\nBotanical Garden website.<\/p>\n
Blossomings in culture are rare and highly unpredictable,
\ngiven the natural life cycle of the Amorphophallus titanum.<\/p>\n
\"The tuber is usually dormant for six months to two years,\"
\nsaid Yuzammi Yunis, an Aroid specialist at Bogor Botanic Garden.<\/p>\n
The tubers, which can weigh up to 120 kilograms when mature,
\nsend out a single leaf plant about once every four months, which
\ndies after a few weeks.<\/p>\n
\"If it is not mature enough it will just send out a leaf
\nagain, until the tuber is strong enough to produce a flower,\"
\nsaid Yunis.<\/p>\n
Although Bogor Botanical Gardens has 10 Amorphophallus titanum
\ntubers in residence, only one has blossomed. The same tuber,
\nweighing about 100 kilograms, that flowered last August also
\nblossomed in 1994 and 1997, each time drawing thousands of
\nvisitors to the garden.<\/p>\n
The plant will only blossom during the rainy season, which
\nlasts from October to March in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
The rare flower is not only remarkable for its size, and
\nshape, but also for its odor, which smells something like \"a lot
\nof dead rats,\" according to Bogor guide Ismail, hence the
\nIndonesian name.<\/p>\n
The stench, in nature, is to attract carrion beetles and sweat
\nbees to pollinate the plant.<\/p>\n
Besides its pungent odour the Bunga Bangkai will also
\nliterally let off steam between 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. at night.<\/p>\n
\"During that time the flower is ready to accept pollen and the
\ntemperature inside the flower really increases, while the
\ntemperature outside cools off at night, so that why it lets off
\nsteam,\" said Yunis.<\/p>\n
The whole blooming process lasts only two days. In the wild,
\nat least two plants must be flowering at the same time for
\nsuccessful cross-pollination to occur, which helps explain why
\nthe species is quickly becoming scarce in its native Sumatra.
\nAnother threat is deforestation.<\/p>\n
\"A lot of forests have already been destroyed, so this plant's
\nnatural habitat is threatened,\" said Yunis, one of Indonesia's
\nfew Amorphophallus titanum experts.<\/p>\n
Adding to the tuber's problems has been overhunting of
\nhornbills, which in nature eat the flower's fruit, which
\nreportedly don't taste as bad as the flower smells, and then help
\nscatter its seeds in the wild.<\/p>\n
In an effort to help preserve the increasingly rare plant,
\nYunis is researching its possible medicinal applications at the
\nNational Institute of Sciences (LIPI) in collaboration with The
\nRoyal Botanic Gardens of Sydney.<\/p>\n
\"My duty is to find out what kind of value the plant has so I
\ncan teach villagers to preserve them,\" said Yunis. At present,
\nthe flower's horrific odor is not proving a successful survival
\nmechanism in Sumatra, where villagers are increasingly
\nencroaching the forests and see no reason to preserve the smelly
\nplant.<\/p>\n
\"They just cut them down,\" said Yunis.<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/something-smelly-a-lure-in-bogor-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }