A corpse flower blooms in the United States for the first time - June 8th, 1937

On this day in 1937, North America’s first recorded corpse flower bloom took place at the New York Botanical Garden. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio, Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that discovers something new about history every day
of the week. I'm Gay Bluesier, and in this episode,
we're talking about a natural event so rare and distinctive

(00:22):
that it can both attract and repulse a crowd at
the same time. The day was June eighth, ninety seven.
North America's first recorded corpse flower bloom took place at

(00:42):
the New York Botanical Garden. The plants central stock, called
a spadix, measured eight feet high and was the tallest
ever grown in cultivation at the time. The corpse flower,
also known as the titan aram, is native to the
island of Sumach in Indonesia. It's known for two defining features.

(01:04):
The first is its enormous size. The plant's fleshy central
spike or spade x, can grow as tall as twelve
feet in the wild. That would make the tighten aram
the world's largest flower, except it isn't technically a single flower.
The plant spade x bears clusters of small flowers and

(01:25):
rings all around its base. That means the tighten aram
is what's known as an unbranched inflorescence, which is basically
a floral structure made up of lots of smaller individual flowers,
and for what it's worth, the tighten aram is the
largest one of those. The plants spadix is wrapped in

(01:45):
a big frilly leaf called a spathe, and when it's
time to bloom, the spathe unfurls, revealing the flowers around
its base. If you've ever seen a cala lily, the
titan structure looks a good bit like that. But aeaking
of blooming, That's where the plant's other defining feature comes in,
the one which earned its Indonesian name Bunga banghai, or

(02:09):
corpse flower. When the plant finally blooms, it releases a
powerful odor similar to that of rotting flesh. That's not
all either. The tighten aram actually puffs out the scent
like a chimney in order to spread the smell as
far as possible. The energy produced during blooming heats the
spadics to temperatures as high as ninety eight degrees fahrenheit.

(02:32):
All that heat causes the air to rise, sending the
stench out to nearby insect pollinators who typically feed on
dead animals. When the curious beetles arrive, they see the
dark red interior of the plant's open spathe and assume
it's the meat they've been smelling. By the way, if
you're curious about that smell. Scientists have actually identified the

(02:55):
different molecules that produce the plant's odor. Some of the
heaviest hitters are dimethyl trisulfide, trimethylamine, an iso valeric acid
that's limburger cheese, rotten fish, and sweaty gym socks, respectively.
This striking plant remained unknown to Western horticulturists until eighteen

(03:18):
seventy eight. That's the year Italian botanists Odoaro Bakari first
encountered the giant plant while exploring the Sumatran rainforest. The
specimen he found was ten feet high and had a
circumference of about five ft. Bacari tried to send samples
of the plant back to Europe, but most of those

(03:38):
were seized and destroyed by French customs. However, one seedling
managed to make it through, eventually ending up at the
ce Botanic Gardens in England. It flowered there for the
first time in eighteen eighty nine and descriptions of the strange,
smelly plant captured the country's imagination for years to come,

(04:00):
so much so that when that same corpse flower bloomed
for a second time in nineteen six police had to
be called in to keep the teeming crowd at bay.
If you're paying attention, you probably noted the thirty seven
year gap between the corpse flower blooms in England. That's
no mistake. It can take years and sometimes decades for

(04:22):
one of the plants to store enough energy to bloom.
For instance, horticulturists at the New York Botanical Garden received
their sixty pound seedling from Sumatra in June of nineteen
thirty two, a full five years before its eventual bloom.
The plant was kept in a tropical greenhouse during that time,
with a high temperature and a humid atmosphere, perfect first

(04:45):
stimulating growth. Even under ideal conditions, though, it still took
five years for the plant to form flower buds. But
when that did finally happen, the flowers matured quickly, and
horticulturists knew the long awaited bloom would soon be at hand.
The momentous event was described later that year and the
Botanical Gardens Journal. According to the report, the actual opening

(05:09):
of the flower had begun in the afternoon of June seventh,
but was halted in the evening due to a drop
in temperature. The next morning, is the temperature gradually rose,
the corpse flower finally began to bloom in earnest. The
author recounted the hour's long affair and the smell it produced,
saying quote, by one pm, it had reached ninety degrees

(05:31):
inside the greenhouse and the spathe again began to expand.
At four PM, the temperature reached a high of ninety
six degrees, and development of the opening inflorescence continued rapidly
until seven forty pm, when it reached its maximum. While
at the height of its development, a distinctly unpleasant odor

(05:52):
was emitted by the plant, but this in no way
compared with the disgusting stench of the plant which flowered
at q in nineteen twenty six. Smelly or not, It
was the first Titan aram to ever flower in North America,
and the Gardens Conservatory was quickly flooded with visitors hoping
to see and smell it for themselves. Not everyone in

(06:15):
the city got a chance to see the bloom in time,
but surprisingly they didn't have to wait long for a
second shot. A second specimen bloomed at the New York
Botanical Garden just two years later. By then, the public
had become so enamored with the corpse flower that the
Bronx Borough President actually declared it the official flower of

(06:35):
the Bronx. The plan held onto that title all the
way up to the early two thousands, when it was
supplanted by the day lily as part of an effort
to improve the borough's image. Despite the Bronx turning its
back on the corpse flower, the New York Botanical Garden
continues to host the plants much celebrated blooms, including most

(06:55):
recently in One Before we Go. I to give a
shout out to beloved English naturalist and World treasure Sir
David Attenborough. He's credited with coming up with the common
name for the corpse flower, the titan Ram. Attenborough reportedly
coined the name while narrating a BBC Nature documentary series

(07:16):
called The Private Life of Plants. He did so to
avoid the embarrassment of using the plant's scientific name, a
morpho fallus tight tantum, which is derived from the ancient
Greek words for giant misshapen penis. Of course, at the
end of the day, it doesn't matter what name you
call it. The corpse flower would smell just as bad

(07:39):
by any other. I'm Gay Blusier and hopefully you now
know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
You can learn even more about history by following us
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(07:59):
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to guest producers Joey pat and Casey Pegram, and thanks
to you for listening. I'll see you back here again
tomorrow for another day in History class.