An Odiferous Araceae

The Arum Family, Araceae, features many fascinating and unusual plants among its 105 genera comprising about 3,000 species. Those cultivating native plants will be familiar with jack-in-the-pulpit and skunk cabbage. In the house, the list extends from Aglaeonema on through Caladium, Calla, Dieffenbachia, Epipremnum, Monstera, Philodendron, Spathiphyllum to Syngonium and many, many others. Those who avoid botanical names will perhaps be familiar though with Spathiphyllum as the Peace Lily or Spathe Flower. Spathe from the strange white shielding structure that partially envelopes that equally strange, frankly phallic-like erection arising in its centre. Technically this is known as the spadix and is a collection of many minute flowers.

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The most imposing species is the appropriately named Amorphophallus titanium with an immense yellow spadix six feet or more tall. Variously known as Corpse Flower, Devil’s Tongue, Penis Plant, Snake Palm or, to its surprisingly many admirers ‘Old Stinky,’ it is native to Sumatra. Arising from a corm almost two feet across and weighing over a hundred pounds, the 15-foot leaves on 10-foot leaf stalk make it a trifle large for most homes. Then again when it does flower – which may take 20 years or more – the smell is overpowering. “I’d say it’s like a several-days-old bloated roadkill," says Deborah Wiley, a greenhouse curator at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia, quoted by Ohio’s Columbus Dispatch. There is a good reason for its appalling odour: it is pollinated by blowflies to which the scent is as the very best as to us that a Parisian perfumer can create. Less than 150 of these extraordinary plants have bloomed in the captive cover of botanical gardens. At the end of last April, an Amorphophallus titanium flowered at Basel Botanical Garden in Switzerland, attracting 10,000 visitors. A couple of weeks later, it was the turn of Ohio State University in Columbus. Greenhouse coordinator Joan Leonard had been cultivating five of the plants since 2001, and this was the first to bloom. Although this is the most imposing of its genera, there are about 90 species of Amorphophallus. According to Hyam & Pankhurst (1995), the name comes from the Greek amorphos, shapeless or deformed, and phallus, an allusion to the form and shape of the inflorescence. Truly, it is wonderful what you can learn by being a gardener.