'Carcass' flower unlikely to bloom

Theresia Sufa, The Jakarta Post, Bogor

At the Cibodas Botanical Park in Bogor officials are doubtful that the carcass flower Amorphophallus titanum, which was expected to bloom in the next few days, will produce a flower. The carcass flower usually blooms triennially.

Head of the park, Holif Immanudin, said visitors had hurled stones at the flower, which had reached a height of 2.85 meters, bruising its solitary spadix.

"We deplore the fact that this vandalism occurred despite our efforts to protect the flower by building a fence around it. Now we can only sit back and see whether the flower will bloom," he said on Monday.

Holif said that the vandals had also hampered the plans of researchers who had hoped to study the flower's pollination process.

Endemic to Sumatra island, Amorphophallus titanum, which means the god Titan's scepter, has the largest inflorescence among the Araceae family. The flower can reach a height of six meters and a diameter of three meters.

Also known as Titan Arum, the plant is locally known as Bunga Bangkai (carcass flower) due to its smell, which has been compared to that of a rotting carcass. The smell is more intense during the blooming process, which takes less than one day.

There are about 170 species of Amorphophallus growing in locations from Africa to Australia. In Indonesia, according to Holif, there are 32 species: 13 in Sumatra, eight in Java, nine in Kalimantan, and one each on the Sulawesi and Irian islands.

The flower usually grow on hills with adequate water and sunlight. However, the flowers can also thrive in soil with a high calcium deposit, 600 metres to 900 meters above sea level.

Cibodas Botanical Park has 86 carcass flowers from eight different genus besides the Amorphophallus species, such as Anthurium, Caladium, Homalomena, Rhapidophora, Schismatoglottis, Zantedeschia, and Spathiphyllum.

However, only two of the park's specimens have so far flowered.

Recently, one of ten Amorphophallus titanum in the Bogor Botanical Gardens bloomed. It's spadix reached a height of 1.9 meters, while the diameter of the magenta spathe was about 80 centimeters.

After several hours in bloom on Feb. 29, the spadix shriveled, the spathe curved downward, and the stench of the flower faded.