"What a strange and interesting
and unusual plant!"
--Little Shop of Horrors
For anybody who wondered, the World's Largest Blossom is a Titan Arum, also known in Javanese as "bunga bangui", Corpse Flower (Amorphophallus titanum). It may bloom three or four times in its 40-year lifespan, and then, only for two or three days. When it does, it gives off a smell like rotting meat.The big yellow thing is technically not a flower, but an "inflorescence", many small parts together that attract the Sumatran Sweat Bee for pollination. A relative of Jack-in-the-pulpit and skunk cabbage, the titan arum grows from a potato-like tuber that often weighs more than 100 pounds. The blossom itself is about two meters tall.
The first seeds were found in 1878. Titan arums have blossomed only about 40 times in cultivation, including nine times in the United States.
