A young corpse flower takes about seven to ten years to store enough energy to begin its bloom cycle. Each year, the plant’s corm (a tuberous underground root structure) bears vegetation that grows up to 15 feet tall. The umbrella-like structure resembles a tree but is technically one enormous leaf made up of many small leaflets, branching from a stalk called a petiole. The leaf gathers energy from the sun to store in its corm.

The corpse flower that bloomed in 2019 was 12 years old and had been in NYBG's collection for over five years, putting out a single leaf annually and saving the energy to bloom. It is a sibling of the previous two corpse flowers to bloom from our collection. The 2019 Amorphophallus titanum was the fifth to bloom in NYBG history. In our collection, NYBG has seven Amorphophallus titanum that are old enough to bloom, some of which are siblings of the 2016, 2018 and 2019 plants.

Titan arums take years to form flower buds, but when they finally do, the flowers mature quickly.  In the first several days of the bloom cycle, this bud can grow four to six inches per day. Then growth slows significantly. The two bracts at the base of the spathe shrivel and fall off. Next, the spathe, which was once tightly wound around the spadix, begins to open, revealing the deep red color inside.

You can read more about corpse flowers in our guide linked here.

Courtesy of NYBG Plant Information Service