Bloom's Day

Bloom’s Day by Raymond Nakamura 

The last time Uncle Fester showed up (2018), we were out of town. This time, we had no excuse. 

Uncle Fester is a Titan arum, A.K.A. The Corpse Flower, a rare plant that produces the largest flower in the world, which can grow up to four or five metres and produces a fragrance resembling rotting meat. Who wouldn’t want to witness such a wonder of nature? 

But Corpse Flowers are fickle. You can’t tell when they’re going to bloom and when they do, they might only last a few days. And amidst the pandemic, the Bloedel Conservatory could only allow so many people at a time and you could only stay for twenty minutes. If we waited until it actually bloomed, we might not be able to get a spot. But how to decide when to go?

The corpse flower emerges from an underground core called the corm. The corm can remain dormant for periods of time. During the dormant stage, the Bloedel conservatory keeps Uncle Fester in a separate greenhouse. At some point, a single rolled up leaf may sprout. This can either turn into a single leaf with multiple leaflets or a flower. It does not seem to follow a set pattern. It can take up to ten years for a bloom to appear. When the Corpse Plant at the Bloedel bloomed in 2018, it was estimated to be about six years old. They were even more surprised when this second bloom appeared only two years after the first. 

The natural habitat for a corpse flower is in the hot and humid tropical rain forest of Sumatra, Indonesia. Logging and the conversion of native forest to oil palm plantations has reduced the numbers of corpse flowers to less than a thousand in the wild. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature added it to the Red List for endangered species in 2018. Breeding programs through botanical gardens are part of efforts to raise awareness about this remarkable plant. The Conservatory acquired their corpse plant from a nursery in North Carolina in 2016. 

To help us guess when it might bloom, we studied the time-lapse video on the Bloedel web site from the last time Uncle Fester bloomed in 2018. That’s when people in Vancouver came up with the name Uncle Fester. Memories of watching the Addams Family after school when I was a kid.

Using the previous video to figure out the timing was tricky because we didn’t know if it started at a comparable point and they can bloom at different sizes anyway. Even so, we thought it might reach bloom in about a week. We noticed two slots had been taken around that time. We thought maybe they were on to something, but this was probably just wishful thinking. 

So we booked tickets at the Bloedel Conservatory. Our teen wanted nothing to do with her nerdy parents. It was rare for this unusual plant to bloom and rare for us to leave the house for a non-essential purpose. 

(Drawing by Raymond Nakamura)

 

Unforutnately, when we went, it had not yet bloomed. Still, it was impressive, about six feet (1.8 m) tall. The tallest part is a tapered pointy column in the centre, called a spadix. This is probably where the scientific name comes from: Amorphophallus titanum meaning “giant misshapen penis.” The cabbage-like skirt is called the spathe. I looked up these terms after I made the original drawings. I took my iPad and Apple pencil with me and here is my sketch.
 

(Comic by Raymond Nakamura)

 

About a week after we visited, the news reported that Uncle Fester had finally bloomed. As soon as we heard, we checked back on the web site. They had expanded the visiting times and still had some openings. So we got spots for the next morning. The tickets weren’t that expensive and we were looking for an excuse to get out of the house. I had found carrying the iPad around a little awkward for drawing in public, so this time I just took a pen and pocket sketchbook. We waited in line, spaced out, until it was our turn.

We wore our masks, but it was no longer required at that time and some had not. Obviously, I could have just snapped a picture, but I wanted to savour the moment a little longer. I find that when I stop to draw something, it sticks in my memory more. 

 

(Drawing by Raymond Nakamura)

The spathe had now unfurled and was rotten flesh maroon on the inside. Apparently, this is all part of the “dead meat” theme. The smell which is generated near the base smelled a bit like rotten fish, like I remember near Lake Ontario as a kid. The smell wasn’t really that bad, compared to say, changing diapers or picking up dog poop. I suppose different people have different reactions as well. I had to take off my mask to smell it at all and the smell seemed to vary with location. We weren’t allowed to be too close, but later I read that the spadix in the middle heats up to about flesh temperature and this also helps with the emission of the smell.

 

(Photo: Lenora Ho)

I’ll bet the shape of both the cone shaped spathe and the projectile spadix affect the fluid dynamics of dissipating the scent.

Something that annoyed me a little was that they had a giant ruler that was only marked in Imperial units. This is supposed to be Canada. 

 

 (Photo: Lenora Ho)

Measurements for the height of the flower were posted on the web site and I graphed them in Excel. You can see how it grows the most quickly and then tapers off.

While we were there, a person with a video camera was interviewing people for their reactions. Later, a friend spotted us on the CBC Evening News. We weren’t interviewed ourselves, but my spouse and I were in the background of some others.

Although we are inundated with information and video about the world, experiencing things first hand is a much deeper experience, to better appreciate the scale, the colour, and of course, the smell. As they say, you had to be there.

For more information

Vancouver Parks Board notes on the Corpse Flower.