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Corpse flowers make stink at home, abroad
Antara/JafkhairiThe rare blooming of a giant corpse flower, which is native to Indonesia, in New York, United States, has drawn much attention to the unique plant and its original habitat in Sumatra
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Antara/Jafkhairi
The rare blooming of a giant corpse flower, which is native to Indonesia, in New York, United States, has drawn much attention to the unique plant and its original habitat in Sumatra.
An Amorphophallus titanum, also known as a titan arum, bloomed at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) on June 26, the first blooming at the garden since July 2016.
The event drew a crowd of thousands and caught the attention of conservationists in Indonesia who raised concerns about the flower’s origin
“We [Indonesia] have never sent a live specimen of the corpse flower abroad,” said Didik Widyatmoko, the head of the plant conservation center at the Bogor Botanical Gardens-Inonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI).
He acknowledged, however, that prior to the creation of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992, many parties “illegally” traded specimens.
The titan arum, which only grows in the rainforests of Sumatra, was first discovered in 1878 by Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari and is recorded as the largest flower in the world. It is often referred to as a corpse flower because of its distinct foul odor, described as a mix between rotting fish and strong cheese.
According to the Journal of the New York Botanical Garden, the NYBG received a specimen of the flower in 1932, before Indonesian independence, after “an order was placed with A. M. Oostingh, Fort de Kock”, a 19th century Dutch colonial fortification located in Bukittinggi, West Sumatra.
Marc Hachadourian, the director of the NYBG’s Nolen Greenhouses where its titan arums are grown, told The Jakarta Post that the garden currently had 39 live titan arum specimens, consisting of seven mature plants and 32 seedlings, all of which had been cultivated in the United States.
The NYBG is not the only foreign botanical garden to have a live titan arum. At least 70 gardens worldwide have titan arums, most of them in the US and Europe, Botanic Gardens Conservation International’s (BCGI) database shows.
The Kew Gardens in London, the United Kingdom, for example, recorded its first titan arum blooming in 1889, 11 years after the flower was first discovered.
“Their impact on botanical garden visitors around the world has been significant. Each flowering provides an opportunity to share with our visitors another botanical marvel, its history, nativity, life cycle and importance to the local environment,” Chicago Botanical Garden’s director of living plant documentation, Boyce Tankersley, said.
The first titan arum flowering at the Chicago garden in 2015 attracted over 70,000 visitors, he added.
The garden currently has 56 titan arums in its living collection, which are descended from a collection made in collaboration with the BBC in the early 1990s.
“All of the existing plants are second or more generations from the original collection plants,” Boyce said.
Didik said the Indonesian government and conservation institutions should look into creating a win-win solution with these foreign botanical gardens so as not to miss out on potential benefits.
“Getting the specimen is very profitable and when the specimen blooms, they [the foreign gardens] get a lot of visitors and earn a lot of revenue, but Indonesia gets nothing,” he said. “It’s very hard to bring [the flowers] back to Indonesia,
but there should be some sort of mutually beneficial cooperation.”
Bogor-based corpse flower researcher Yuzammi said foreign help was needed to ensure the flower’s continued survival in the wild, as its habitat was being degraded.
Foreign botanical gardens seemed to be open to the idea of collaboration.
“We have not been in contact with government or conservation institutions in Indonesia but would welcome communication to learn,” the NYBG’s Hachadourian said.
The Chicago Botanical Garden’s Tankersley said inbreeding was a concern, as closely related titan arums have a “markedly reduced viable seed set”, and that internal discussions have started about working together with a Sumatran botanical garden or Indonesian government agency to address the problem.
